Chapter 14 - The Empty Room
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August arrived with the heavy, humid heat of late summer, bringing with it the inevitable reality of packing boxes.
Noah’s bedroom upstairs looked like a warehouse of transition. Cardboard boxes lined the walls, labeled neatly in black marker: Books, Drafting Supplies, Winter Clothes, Miscellaneous.
I stood in the doorway, holding a roll of packing tape, watching him struggle to fold a box bottom correctly.
"You're doing it backward," I pointed out, stepping into the room.
Noah groaned, letting the cardboard flop open. "I'm an architecture major, not a box engineer."
"Clearly," I teased, kneeling down to show him the interlocking flaps. "You need a solid foundation before you build anything of value. That's design rule number one."
He smiled, sitting back against his bed frame, which was now completely stripped of its sheets and pillows. The room looked bare, echoing with the ghosts of his childhood—the height marks on the doorframe, the faint stickers on the closet door, the quiet sanctuary we had built together out of the ruins of a terrifying past.
"It's weird," Noah said quietly, looking around the empty space.
"What is?"
"Leaving this room. Sometimes I still remember the night we came here. How cold it was. How scared I was that someone would knock on the door and take me away."
I sat on the edge of the bare mattress, looking at my son.
"You were safe then, and you're safe now," I told him, my voice unwavering. "The door is locked against the dark, Noah. But it's open wide to the light."
May you like
"I know," he whispered. He reached over and pulled a small, worn blue blanket from a duffel bag—the one Grace had mended years ago. "I'm taking this."
"Naturally," I smiled. "Grace would disown both of us if you left it behind."
