She pointed to the structure she’d built, the paint samples bright against the dull concrete floor.
Behind us, the door opened and a rush of air came in. I heard Kat gasp, but her house stayed intact. The colors balancing against each other, leaning on one another.
So as not to collapse.
?Epilogue
Hope
I’m in my new office and the blue water sparkles outside my window. There is a leather-bound journal in front of me, my pencil poised over the cream-colored paper.
I started seeing a grief counselor this past week. She suggested keeping a journal as a way to write about my feelings. When I told her I was struggling with where to begin, she gave me an exercise.
“Get in the habit of writing three words at the start of every journal entry,” the counselor had said. “Whatever comes to mind. Three words to describe how you’re feeling.”
It sounded easy enough.
But an hour has passed, and the blank page is staring back at me.
Jack is outside my office sanding a banister. Now and again, he comes in and I feel his lips against the top of my head or the side of my neck. When he leaves my office, I hear him whistling a catchy, upbeat tune and I find my foot tapping along to it.
Jess and Kat are on the lawn below, doing cartwheels through the sprinkler, wet pieces of grass clinging to their ankles. From time to time, their laughter drifts in through the window. Like wind chimes tinkling in a breeze. It’s like hearing my very own symphony, so I am content to listen and wait. It strikes me that this is why I haven’t been writing this past year. So much of writing is listening. Waiting to hear what will arrive in the silence.
I think about this house. How there is a memory behind every door: the story of our family between these walls.
Outside my window, the ocean sits. Limitless and teeming with life. My daughter now a part of the eternal ebb and flow. Her eyes reflected in the blue expanse in front of me.
I put my pencil to the paper and write the first three words that come to mind.
The Salt House.