Chapter 35
Before she could change her mind, Ivy inserted the key into the lock. Expecting the lock to be rusty or difficult to unlock, when the doorknob turned easily, for a split second, she thought she had made a terrible mistake. When the knob turned gently in her grip, she gasped. By entering one of the rooms she had kept off-limits for the past eight years, Ivy was taking the next step of joining the world again. She knew that if she was to ever come to terms with her past, she had to confront her memories of the two little children who would forever be in her heart, always.
Tears filled her eyes as she stepped into the room. Inhaling, she smelled something in the air, a lingering scent of . . . baby lotion? She used the sleeve of her sweater to blot her eyes. Looking around the room that she had not entered since the accident, she took in the single bed. It was covered with a faded pink comforter; the other twin bed, with its plain blue blanket pulled up to the top, waited next door.
“Bink bank,” she said out loud. James’s name for his twin’s favorite pink blanket. Ivy walked over to the bed, and smoothed the wrinkles from the precious covering. She brought the pillow to her face and inhaled, expecting to breathe in the clean scent of the organic shampoo she had used on both children. Musty and dank, it smelled only of a long-closed room.
Holding the pillow, she sat on Elizabeth’s bed, where Mr. Tibbles, her teddy bear, usually rested, but Ivy did not want to think about the bear now. Hugging Elizabeth’s pillow and breathing in its scent, she could swear she smelled her favorite perfume, just a hint. And then she remembered that the last night she had put Elizabeth to bed, they had played makeup after her bath. Ivy had let her spritz herself with “Mommy’s big-girl spray” before putting her to bed. She had forgotten about that night until just now. The tragedy had pushed aside this special memory, and Ivy cried at the injustice of what had happened to her sweet, innocent children. And John, too. She returned the pillow to its place at the head of Elizabeth’s bed.
Standing in the center of the room, she slowly turned around, taking in eight years of . . . a room.
As she continued to spin around the room, she thought how this was simply a room in a house that was no longer a home, that had not been a home since the fatal crash.
She stopped and closed her eyes until the room stopped spinning. There were two chests in the room, a pink one and a blue one. She hadn’t gotten around to moving James’s dresser and his toy chest into his big-boy room. She opened the top drawer of the blue chest, expecting to find his clothes neatly folded, as they’d been the last time she had opened the drawer.
It was empty.
She opened the next drawer and the one below. Both were empty.
Flying across the room to Elizabeth’s pink chest, she opened all the drawers and, again, found nothing. Not a trace.
Who had removed the clothes that belonged in these drawers? She whirled around the room, realizing all the toys, books, and games that belonged to her daughter were no longer tossed around the room. Elizabeth’s Dora the Explorer dolls had been removed from the shelf above her bed. Her miniature table and two matching chairs were gone as well. All of James’s books were gone, too. His ant farm, the plastic containers of Legos, were nothing but a memory.
She wanted to . . . She was not sure what she should do. All of this, or, to be more precise, the lack of her children’s possessions, stunned her. What had she expected? She was not sure. Ivy had no memory of anyone’s clearing out their rooms, but she had not been in any shape to recall exactly who came and went the first couple of years after their deaths.
Her father, perhaps? Or Rebecca, most likely, had cleared out their rooms, leaving nothing more than the barest reminders of the two who’d spent such a short time in them. While she wanted to feel anger at whoever made the decision to remove all traces of her children from their bedrooms, she found she could not. Had she discovered that their toys and games had been removed a few years ago, she felt sure she could have mustered the proper emotion, be it anger, sadness, or grief, but now, all she felt was relief. So many years she had dreaded this confrontation with the past, feared the emotions it would stir up. Whoever chose to remove James’s and Elizabeth’s toys and clothes had only done so to spare her the horrid task that no parent should ever have to undertake and the accompanying emotions that no parent should ever have to endure.
Feeling sad, but incredibly relieved, she went over to the single window opposite the bed and pulled the curtains aside. She remembered when she had instructed the deliverymen to place the bed on the wall away from the window. Then her thoughts had been on chilly breezes seeping through the window, bringing on a stuffy nose and a sore throat. How simple her worries had been then, she thought as she struggled to open the window.
Using both arms and what strength she possessed, she was able to push the double-framed window up. The night air sent a chill through her. Briefly she thought her decision to keep the children’s beds away from the windows in their rooms had been a wise one.
Ivy lowered the window just enough to air out the room’s mustiness without turning the upstairs into a meat locker. She stood in the center of the bedroom, seeking the proper emotion, but all she felt was a deep-rooted sadness in her heart at the loss of two bright futures for children whom she and John had created and loved deeply. Still loved. That would never change. A mother always loved her children, no matter what.
She did. Now that her alcoholic fog was completely gone, she was not about to take one more minute of life for granted. Life was so very short, as she well knew. It was more than a disservice to her family’s memory to cower inside this house in a drunken stupor, getting plastered in order to get through each day. That was in the past, and if she wanted to live in the here and now, it would have to stay in the past.
With the knowledge that James and Elizabeth would always be remembered and loved by her, she walked out of her daughter’s room, but left the door partially open. She gripped the key in her hand, but knew she would never have to use it again. She would open up James’s room tomorrow morning. The doors to her past would finally be open, and now it was time to unlock the possibilities of what her future held.
Holly Greenwood’s magical voice came to mind. Recalling her talk with Sarah, and her desire to do whatever she could to make sure the young girl sang in The Upside’s annual Christmas musical, she knew, felt, deep in her heart that helping this child realize her deepest wish was a gift that had been handed to her, and there was no way she was going to turn her back on this unexpected present.
Downstairs, she filled the teakettle with water and placed it on a burner to heat up. While waiting for the water to boil, she scrubbed the thick globs of burned coffee from the pot she had left to soak yesterday. When the kettle whistled, she removed it from the stove and poured the boiling water over her chamomile tea bag. She added a spoonful of honey and stirred the golden sweetness before heading to the living room. Normally, she would have spent the rest of the evening drinking and binge watching whatever her program of choice was, but now she simply wanted quiet, time to think, time to plan a future, something that she had all but forgotten existed.