Chapter 15 - The Frame That Stayed
That night my dad didn't tell me to go to bed. He asked if he could sit with me while I did it myself.
I was already in my off-white dress, the one with the puff sleeves that I'd worn the night I told Jenna she wasn't my mommy. My hair was still damp from the bath and my cream bow was on the dresser. The room was the same, the white bookcase with the bears, the bunny with the blue ears in the corner, the dark wood floor warm under my bare feet, the light turned down low the way Dad always left it.
Jenna knocked once on the door frame before she came in. She'd started doing that after the night the silver frame cracked. She held a book, not the one my mom used to read, a different one from the library with a dog on the cover.
"Okay if I read?" she asked.
I nodded. That was her place now. She didn't tuck me in. She read.
My dad sat on the edge of the rug, his gray pants folded at the knee, his navy sweater sleeves pushed up. His silver watch caught the light when he moved. His wedding band was still there. It had never left. In the weeks after Mom died he'd turned it when he was nervous, and he was still turning it that night, just slower.
I never called Jenna Mom and she never asked me to. That was the rule we didn't have to write down. In the beginning I thought if I was nice to her it would mean I was forgetting. I thought if Dad let her stay it would mean the photograph didn't matter anymore. We'd gotten it wrong in both directions.
Jenna sat in the chair my dad used to kneel beside. She opened the book and read in her normal voice, not a mom voice, not a pretend voice. When she got to the funny part with the dog in the mud, she looked at me to see if I laughed. I did, a little.
When she finished she closed the book and put it back on the shelf, right next to the bears where it belonged. She didn't kiss my forehead. She brushed the hair off my forehead instead, because I'd let her start doing my hair in the mornings after I decided her hands were gentle enough. She'd learned how not to pull the tangles.
"Goodnight, Sofia," she said.
"Goodnight, Jenna," I said.
She left the door open a crack, the way I liked, and went down the hall. She never tried to be the one who stayed until I fell asleep. That was still Dad's job and he knew it and she knew it.
Dad waited until her footsteps faded. Then he reached for the silver frame.
He'd had the glass replaced at the hardware store on Main, the one with the bell over the door. He'd let me come with him and watch the man cut it. The new glass had a tiny bubble near the edge if you looked close, but the picture inside was the same, Mom holding me, both of us squinting into the sun. He put it back on the middle shelf of the white bookcase, not hidden in a closet anymore and not clutched in my hands all night either. Right where Mom could see.
"She still sees you, you know," he said quietly. "Not just through that. Through you remembering."
I remembered what I'd told him that first night, that Mommy said it so she can still see me. I hadn't known how to explain it then. I was three and I thought seeing was something the photograph did, like eyes. Now I understood what she'd meant when she gave it to me before the hospital. She'd wanted me to have something to look at when I wanted to talk to her.
"I know," I said.
He smiled and the lines around his eyes showed. He didn't tell me to be strong or to move on. He just sat there breathing with me.
"Do you want to tell her goodnight?" he asked.
I did. I stood up on my mattress and touched the frame the way I'd always done, with both hands at first and then just my fingertips on the silver edge. The metal was cool. The room was quiet except for the heater clicking.
"Goodnight, Mommy," I whispered.
Dad didn't correct me. He didn't look away.
Years later I would stand in that same room and do the same thing. I am older now as I tell you this, old enough to know how the light falls at different times of day and why my dad kept that watch and that ring. Jenna still lives with us. She still reads the dog book sometimes when I ask, and she still does my hair when I let her, and Dad still wears his band, and the frame still sits on that same white bookcase between the bears.
May you like
I touch it and I don't worry anymore that Mom will disappear if I let go. She sees me because I carry her with me, not because I'm holding glass. That night we finally got the shape of it right. There was room for Mom and room for Jenna and room for me, and no one had to pretend to be someone else.
I climbed back under the blanket. Dad pulled it up to my shoulders. The photograph stayed where it was, catching the warm dim light, watching over the room the way it was meant to. I fell asleep with my hands empty, and it was okay.
