Memory Mausoleum

The door at the end of the hall still had the peeling star sticker on it. It was the only bit of colour on that side of the house. It was bright yellow once, now faded to a soft, sleepy gold. He remembered sticking it on with her when she was six, her tiny hand guiding his much larger one, insisting that “every real room needs a star or it’s not official.”

Michael stood there now, thumb resting on the doorknob. He took a deep breath, then let it out.

He hadn’t stepped inside in… God, how long had it been?

Three years, he told himself. Three years since she’d left for college. Three years since she packed in a blur of excitement and nerves. Three years since the hallway stopped echoing with her footsteps, since her music stopped drifting under the door, since her laughter stopped ricocheting off the walls. He tried to picture her walking down the front steps with her suitcase, waving at him, promising she’d call.

The image flickered.

He pushed the door open.

The hinges groaned, stretching back into motion after years of stillness. The faint smell of lavender (her favourite) drifted out like a ghost greeting him.

The room looked exactly the same.

Messy bedspread, half-off the mattress. Posters lining the wall. A desk cluttered in a way that hadn’t changed since she was twelve. It was as if time had curled itself around the room, refusing to touch anything after she left.

Michael stepped inside, feeling something hollow open inside him.

He brushed his fingertips across her bookshelf. The first book he touched was The Hobbit. He smiled. She had insisted he read it to her every night for weeks when she was ten. She could recite lines by heart and always begged him to “do the voices.” He’d felt ridiculous every time, yet now, he’d give anything to hear her laugh at his poor attempt at a dwarf accent (Gollum was always her favorite though, he did it even though it hurt his voice).

Next to the books sat a small ceramic frog she had made in third grade. Lumpy, crooked, painted with far too much glitter.

She’d placed it on the shelf proudly.

“It’s lucky,” she’d said.

“It’s beautiful,” he’d replied, and meant it because she had made it.

He picked it up. A crack ran along its belly, he remembered that too. She’d dropped it once and cried as if the world had ended. He’d glued it back together the same night, letting it dry on the kitchen counter while she hovered anxiously.

“Mum’s gonna kill me,” she’d whispered.

“Not if we fix it first,” he’d told her.

And they had. Together.

The frog glimmered weakly in the dusty light. He set it back with great care.

The window curtains were still the ones she’d chosen (purple with tiny moons stitched along the hem). He had no idea where she found them. Probably some thrift store she dragged him into on a Saturday morning, claiming she was “cultivating an aesthetic.”

He approached the bed next. It looked as though she had just slid off it that morning. A hoodie lay draped over the pillow. He lifted it. It was soft, worn with the sleeves still knotted from where she habitually tied them when she felt fidgety.

He held it against his face, inhaling.

Faint vanilla. Something floral.

Something hers.

It felt like a punch to the chest.

“God, kiddo,” he whispered, “I’ve missed you.”

His voice sounded strange in the room, it sounded too old, too tired, not like his voice at all.

Being a parent had been the best and hardest thing he had ever done. He’d never expected how guilty it would feel. How often he’d lie awake wondering if he had done enough, if he had listened hard enough, if he had chosen the right battles, the right words, the right times to step in or to step back.

He hadn’t been perfect. No parent was, although we wished he was.

But he had tried. Every damn day. Even on the days he felt he was barely holding himself together. He crossed to her desk. Stacks of notebooks sat haphazardly atop it, some with stickers on the covers, others with doodles spiralling into the margins. Tiny stars, little mushrooms, phrases she never finished writing. He opened one of them.

A drawing spilled across the page, one of her surreal pieces. A figure standing at the edge of a cliff under a moon too big for the sky.

“Where lost things go,” she had once told him, tapping the page thoughtfully.

He hadn’t understood then. He had just smiled and ruffled her hair. She’d rolled her eyes and laughed, pretending to hate it but leaning into his hand all the same.

On the corner of the desk sat a row of hair ties. She’d lost them constantly, yet somehow they always turned up somewhere, looped around doorknobs, tangled in couch cushions, stuffed into coat pockets. Seeing them gathered there now felt like seeing a trail of breadcrumbs leading back through time.

And then he saw it.

A small envelope, lying face down beneath a stack of papers.

Something pricked at his memory. It was faint, blurry, like something submerged deep underwater. He reached for it slowly, turning it over.

His name.

In her handwriting.

His throat tightened.

He didn’t remember putting this here.

Did she leave it before she moved out?

A goodbye?

A thank you?

An explanation for the rushed departure?

Hands trembling, he opened it.

Just a few lines.

Her handwriting wavered.

Ink smudged in places.

He read.

Dad… I’m sorry. I don’t know how to keep going. Please know I love you. Please don’t blame yourself.

Michael’s heartbeat stuttered.

“No.”

No, she had gone to college.

She had packed. She had left.

He had hugged her. He had—

His breath caught.

Not a hug goodbye.

Not a packed suitcase.

Not a proud send-off in the driveway.

But officers at the door.

His wife collapsing.

A paramedic’s quiet voice.

The world tilting sideways.

The letter clutched in someone’s gloved hand.

Her room sealed.

His mind refusing every second of it.

His knees buckled.

He sank into her chair.

The letter fluttered in his trembling grip.

She had never left for college.

She had never left this room.

He had rewritten the ending because the truth threatened to tear him apart.

The room, untouched, undisturbed, wasn’t a nostalgic shrine to a child who had grown up and moved away. It was a mausoleum of the last night she had been alive.

Michael pressed the note to his forehead, eyes stinging.

“Oh… sweetheart…”

His voice cracked like glass.

He had always told her she could come to him. He had always tried to be gentle, to be patient, to be steady even when he felt lost himself. But she had been hurting in a way he never saw. Or perhaps in a way he refused to see.

The frog on the shelf.

The patchwork quilt.

The hair ties.

The sketch of the moon.

All tiny pieces of her.

Pieces he had missed.

Pieces he wished he had held tighter.

He wept a quiet cry, shaking, the kind of cry that came from someplace bone-deep. When he finally opened his eyes, the room looked different. Not changed, just clearer. More honest. The denial had lifted, leaving a fragile truth in its wake. He stood slowly and walked to the doorway. He placed a hand on the frame, steadying himself.

He looked back one last time.

For the first time in three years, he didn’t see a room waiting for someone to return. He saw a room holding the echoes of someone he loved more than anything on this earth.

He let the door stay open.

So the light, whatever faint, gentle light the room still carried, could finally spill out into the hallway again.