Chapter 6: The Yellow Door

I sat down on the hall floor next to Gunnar with my sweater on backward.

"Dale texted," he said, without lifting his head.

"He said you'd be late, and I shouldn't wait up. I waited up anyway."

"Nils," I said.

"Nils," Gunnar said, and I heard him smile into his hands.

"Good. He needed it more than anybody."

His shoulder was warm against mine.

He smelled of sawdust and old coffee, and he had not slept again.

The yellow door stood shut above us, with a brass knob and a scuff at the bottom where a shoe had kicked it.

I looked at it for a while before I asked.

"What's in there?"

Gunnar lowered his hands.

His eyes were red, and he looked at the door for a long time.

"A room," he said.

"Annika picked the paint two springs ago. Butter yellow. She said every baby deserved a room with morning in it."

"We tried for six years, Britt."

I did not say anything.

I had known, though nobody had ever said it out loud.

My sister had never mentioned it to me once.

"There were doctors," Gunnar said.

"There were months we didn't speak of it, and months we spoke of nothing else."

"It never took," he said.

"She painted it anyway. She put the crib together herself, and I came home and found her sitting in it."

"After the last doctor, she shut the door herself. Neither of us has opened it since."

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