The room still held her in a thousand ways too small for guests to name and too large for you to ignore. The cream blanket draped over the chair was the one she had used during the last month of her pregnancy when her feet swelled and she still insisted on reading baby books aloud to twins who hadn’t been born yet. The perfume bottle on the dresser still carried the faint scent of white tea and gardenia because you had never let anyone move it. The framed photograph of her on the shelf, eight months pregnant and laughing with one hand on her belly, still watched the room like a witness who refused to leave.
Helen followed your eyes.
Then she looked back at you, and for the first time there was no softness in her face.
“You didn’t lose her,” she said. “You trapped her.”
The words hit like a slap.
