I placed the tray on the counter.
I said I’d help set up.
Then I realized exactly where she had positioned the couch. “I wouldn’t put it there.”
Chloe straightened, brushed her hair back with her wrist, and gave me the particular smile she used whenever she was preparing to correct someone.
“It grounds the room, Marlene. I follow this interior account that explains feng shui, and this wall is the only placement that works.”
“Chloe. Seriously. Anywhere but there.”
She stared at me and waited.
“Is there a reason?” she finally asked.
I wouldn’t put it there.
“I just wouldn’t.”
Her lips tightened. She tapped the toe of her sneaker against the floorboard twice, then struck it once more with her heel, as though listening for something only she understood.
“The contractor said it was fine,” she murmured, mostly to herself. “They didn’t even have to replace the original boards in this part of the room.”
My gaze dropped toward the floor underneath the couch.
Those original boards were still intact.
For reasons Chloe could never have known, I needed them to remain that way.
“The contractor said it was fine.”
She pushed the couch firmly against the baseboard. “Nolan and I already talked about the layout,” she said. “It’s staying.”
I decided not to argue. Not yet.
Instead, I moved slowly through the living room, my eyes lingering over the places that used to hold something else.
The corner where my late daughter-in-law, Rosalind, once stacked every cushion she could find into forts for Ivy and Theo. The bookshelf where their finger-painted mugs used to sit.
For six months, I had swallowed every opinion.
My son Nolan had finally begun to seem happy again, and I refused to become the mother-in-law who complicated his new marriage simply because I couldn’t release the past.
I let it go. For now.
So whenever another reminder of Rosalind vanished from the house, I repeated the same thing to myself.
This wasn’t my home.
“Rosalind used to build enormous pillow forts right here,” I said. “The kids would eat dinner inside.”
Chloe paused for half a second. “I know,” she said. “Everyone keeps telling me how Rosalind did things.”
Her tone carried more sharpness than the words themselves called for.
It wasn’t my home.
The side door flew open, and my grandchildren, Ivy and Theo, came tumbling inside from the backyard.
Theo carried the old plastic Lego tub tucked under one arm, the bright red one Rosalind had given them the Christmas before she became sick.
“Grandma!” Theo shouted, wrapping himself around my legs.
Ivy hugged me as well, though more quietly, the way she seemed to do everything these days.
Chloe immediately noticed the Lego tub. “Those again?”
Theo pulled it closer against himself. “Mom bought them for us.”
There was something sharper in her voice.
Something briefly passed across Chloe’s expression.
She started to speak, apparently reconsidered whatever she intended to say, and disappeared into the kitchen.
I bent toward the children. “You two want to build something with me before the guests come?”
Theo was already opening the lid.
My eyes moved back toward the white couch.
I had to tell Nolan. Before the party became too crowded and noisy.
“Mom bought them for us.”
I spotted him beyond the back door and began heading in his direction.
“Grandma, look!”
Theo grabbed my hand and tugged me back toward the rug, where Ivy had already started unpacking the Lego tub.
I looked once more at the white couch.
Five minutes, I promised myself. Then I would find Nolan.
