4338.204 · July 23, 2018 AD
The Sewing Room Door
Dawn's yellow kitchen hasn't changed in decades. The kettle clicks on before Claire has finished her first sentence. Behind a closed door down the hall, two children who are supposed to be asleep are listening to every word through thin walls — and learning that grown-ups lie in the dark just as easily as they tell the truth in daylight.
The door opens before Claire has finished speaking, and Dawn pulls her inside without waiting for an explanation. The yellow kitchen is warm and unchanged — the same strawberry-patterned curtains, the same straight-backed chairs, the same steady hands already reaching for the kettle. Claire tries to start small, tries to hide behind Sandra Fitzgerald and the studio, but her mother's gaze won't let her. The real story fractures out in pieces she can't control — the argument, the window, the roses, the packed bag, the hours of silence. Dawn listens, offers weak tea, and responds with pragmatism rather than comfort. If he's really gone, Claire will deal with it. One step at a time.
Claire asks Dawn to keep the children for a few days. To tell them Paul went away for work. The lie feels necessary, protective. She refuses Dawn's offer to go and see them — they're asleep, she says. They need their rest. But the truth is simpler and worse: she cannot look at their sleeping faces without breaking completely. She walks down the dim hallway, past the closed sewing room door, and doesn't stop.
On the other side of that door, Rose is awake.
A creak pulled her from a dream about glowing jellyfish, and now she lies in the fold-out bed with Mack's hand gripping her arm, listening to her mother's voice cut through the thin walls like scissors through wrapping paper. Mack whispers not to move. They hear everything — the window, the silence, the phone that won't answer. They hear their mother ask their grandmother to lie to them. Rose feels an ice cube settle in her stomach that refuses to melt. She waits for the footsteps to turn towards their door, for the handle to move, for Mum to come in and check on them the way she always does.
The footsteps pass. The hallway light clicks off. The door stays closed.
Rose hugs Ribbons the Rabbit to her chest and listens to the house creak around her. The clock counts seconds as if nothing has happened. And just before sleep finds her again, she decides that the ghost in the cupboard might be the only one in this house still telling the truth.
