Chapter 24: The Lamp

I painted the nursery on the second Saturday in January, with a roller on a pole and a pair of Hamish's old sweatpants rolled to the knee.

The paint was called Buttercup, and it was exactly the yellow of the blanket.

I had held the blanket up against six sample chips in the hardware store.

The clerk had waited patiently, and the sixth chip matched.

"Cut in the corners first," Tamara said, from the floor.

She was sitting cross-legged beside the paint tray, in a smock that said World's Okayest Aunt.

"You're supposed to be helping."

"I am helping. I'm supervising. Theo, tell her."

Theo lay in his bouncer in the middle of the drop cloth, looking at the ceiling.

He gurgled at her.

"See? He agrees."

Hamish came in with a ladder under one arm and stood in the doorway.

He stopped there, as he always did.

I noticed it, and I didn't say anything.

"Where do you want the shelf?" he asked.

"By the window. For the chest."

He set up the ladder, the level and the drill, and he worked quietly.

Sometimes I caught him looking at me over his shoulder.

I rolled yellow onto the wall in long wet stripes, over the white primer and the pencil marks.

In this room, nobody had ever stood in a white robe.

By three in the afternoon the whole room was golden.

The sun came through the window and lay across the floor.

Tamara said, "Oh," quietly, and for once did not follow it with a joke.