Chapter 11 - THE ROOM WITH ALL THE WALLS
Nathan sold the mansion.
Everyone thought he was insane.
The newspapers called it a symbolic retreat.
Business analysts predicted instability.
Nathan did not care.
He purchased a smaller house.
Four bedrooms.
A garden.
No pool.
No twenty-foot ceilings.
No marble staircase.
No rooms Noah could disappear inside.
The first night, Noah stood in his bedroom.
He slowly turned.
One wall.
Two.
Three.
Four.
He smiled.
“I can see all of them.”
Nathan cried in the hallway.
Elena pretended not to notice.
She moved into the guest room.
For exactly eleven days.
On the twelfth morning, Noah moved her clothes into Nathan's bedroom.
Elena found him carrying her shoes.
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing it.”
“Fixing what?”
“You sleep in the wrong room.”
Nathan appeared.
“I had nothing to do with this.”
Noah looked at him.
“Coward.”
Elena laughed so hard she had to sit down.
Nathan proposed six months later.
Not at a restaurant.
Not on a yacht.
Not beneath fireworks.
In Elena's kitchen.
Her rebuilt kitchen.
Nathan had purchased the land where her old house stood.
He rebuilt it exactly.
Blue door.
Yellow cabinets.
Old-style curtains.
Elena entered and stopped breathing.
“You rebuilt my house.”
Nathan nodded.
“Why?”
“Because I couldn't save the first one.”
She touched the kitchen counter.
“You remembered.”
“All of it.”
He knelt.
Elena covered her mouth.
Noah appeared from behind the pantry.
He held the ring.
“Dad forgot this.”
Nathan glared.
“You had one job.”
Noah shrugged.
Elena laughed through tears.
Nathan looked at her.
“Elena Cruz, you saved my son before I understood he needed saving.”
His voice broke.
“You saved me too.”
Elena cried.
“I don't need saving.”
“I know.”
Nathan smiled.
“That's one of the terrifying things about you.”
She hit his shoulder.
“Will you marry me?”
Noah whispered loudly, “Say yes.”
Elena looked at Nathan.
Then at Noah.
At the kitchen.
At Mateo's photograph Nathan had placed beside Grace's.
Two people they had loved.
Two people they would never replace.
“Yes.”
Noah screamed.
Nathan stood.
May you like
Elena kissed him.
And for the first time in years, the house with the blue door heard laughter again.
