CHAPTER 152: The Room

POV: Avalon Pierce

They painted it on a Saturday themselves, which had been Selene’s idea and which he’d agreed to without fully understanding what painting a room yourself actually involved.

It involved more than he’d expected.

Maya arrived at nine with Kofi, both of them in old clothes, Kofi carrying actual professional painting equipment because he’d once worked a summer painting buildings in Accra and had opinions about rollers.

“You bought the wrong tape,” Kofi said, looking at what Avalon had purchased.

“It’s tape,” Avalon said.

“It’s the wrong tape,” Kofi said, “I brought the right tape, don't worry .”

He produced it from a bag.

Avalon looked at both tapes and still could not identify the difference.

“Thank you,” he said.

The colour had taken two weeks to be decided.

Not because they couldn’t agree but because every time they thought they’d agreed they’d look at the paint chip again in a different light and one of them would have doubts.

Eventually Selene had held two chips against the wall at seven in the morning and said: “This one. Final answer. No more discussing.”

A soft green.

Kofi had approved without being asked.

Maya had said it was perfect and then immediately suggested a slightly different shade which Selene had ignored completely.

They worked through the morning.

Kofi and Avalon on the walls. Selene and Maya on the trim, which was slower and more detailed and which Selene had assigned herself deliberately because precision suited her.

The room smelled like paint and the specific optimism of a space being changed into something new.

At noon Maya put music on from her phone, something with a good rhythm, and the room became louder and more comfortable and Kofi started explaining the correct way to load a roller with the focused enthusiasm of someone who genuinely cared about roller technique.

Avalon listened and learned things he hadn’t expected to care about and did anyway.

Selene sat on the floor at one point, back against the wall, eating the lunch Maya had produced from somewhere, looking at the half-painted room.

“It’s the right green,” she said.

“It is,” Maya agreed, sitting beside her.

“I keep thinking about what she’ll see when she opens her eyes in this room,” Selene said. “What the first things are that she’ll know.”

“This green,” Maya said.

“This green,” Selene agreed. “And the print we’re putting on that wall. And the window. And us.”

Maya leaned her head on Selene’s shoulder briefly.

Then straightened up and went back to the trim.

By four the room was done.

They stood in the doorway, all four of them, looking at it.

The green walls. The white trim. The window catching the afternoon light.

Empty still. No furniture yet. No curtains.

But no longer neutral.

The room had decided what it was.

“Good room,” Kofi said.

Coming from Kofi, that meant something specific and significant.

Avalon looked at him.

“Thank you,” he said. “For the tape.”

Kofi nodded.

“Drinks,” Kofi said. “We said drinks.”

“We said drinks,” Avalon agreed.

Maya and Kofi left at five.

Selene and Avalon stood in the doorway of Elena’s room alone.

The light was changing, afternoon moving toward evening, the green walls shifting slightly in it the way colours did when the light was honest.

“She’s going to wake up in this room,” Selene said.

“Yes,” he said.

“And we’re going to be on the other side of that wall.”

“Yes.”

“Terrified,” she said.

“Completely,” he agreed.

“Not knowing what we’re doing.”

“Not at first,” he said. “Then gradually less terrified. Then one day she’ll do something that terrifies us in an entirely new way.”

Selene looked at him.

“You sound like you’ve been thinking about this,” she said.

“I’ve been thinking about this,” he said.

“When.”

“Every morning since the scan,” he said. “Lying there before you wake up. Thinking about what it means to be responsible for someone who can’t yet tell us what she needs.”

Selene was quiet.

“And what have you concluded,” she said.

“That I’m going to get a lot of it wrong,” he said. “And that getting it wrong while actually being there is better than getting it right from a distance.”

She looked at him.

At this man who had spent his life managing from a distance and was choosing something different now.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly right.”

She took his hand.

They stood in the doorway of their daughter’s room as the light changed and the green walls held it and outside March did its tentative best with the warmth.

Building toward.

Always building toward.

The best parts still coming.