She picked the light fixtures from a salvage shop outside Asheville, drove 2 hours each way with Ethan strapped into his car seat in the back and installed three of them herself before Marcus came home and asked why the dining room looked different.
She had not expected him to notice.
She installed the fourth one after he went to bed.
The children’s artwork hung in the hallway, not taped to the refrigerator the way most people did it, but framed properly framed in simple white frames she bought in bulk.
Because Clare believed that when you frame a child’s drawing, you are telling them that what they made has value.
And children remember that.
Ethan, age seven, had drawn a rocket ship with six engines and a flag on top that said, “Mom.”
Lily, age five, had painted a garden of flowers taller than the house in colors that did not exist in nature and were better for it.
Baby Jack, age two, had produced a purple circle with two dots that he insisted was a dog named Truck.
Clare had written each child’s name on the back of every drawing with a date and a small note about what they had told her the drawing meant.
She was that kind of woman, the kind who paid attention to the things other people called small because she understood that small things were almost never actually small.
On the refrigerator held by a magnet shaped like the state of North Carolina, was a grocery list in her handwriting organized by aisle.
Her reading glasses were folded on the nightstand beside a half-finished novel, still open to page 204, because she had not yet had time to finish it.
