A Time for Us - By Amy Knupp Page 0,55
reflection. “Not last night.”
Breathing a little easier, she pulled on the shorts and shirt, ran a comb through her hair and escaped the steamy bathroom.
She could handle this. Whatever this was.
Outside of Sawyer’s room, she paused. She threw her dirty scrubs on the floor just inside. Inhaling deeply, slowly, she pivoted and faced the door of her and Noelle’s room.
It was still open, but Rachel had managed to keep her gaze averted every single time she’d walked by it, out of sheer determination. And, okay, she’d admit it...fear.
Apparently, she’d had enough of cowering for one day.
Without giving herself time to think about it, propelled by the realization she’d had in the bathroom, she plowed into the room.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
RACHEL HAD THOUGHT barreling into the room quickly would be easier, like ripping off a bandage all at once instead of drawing out the pain skin cell by skin cell with a gradual removal. She stopped in the center of the bedroom and spun in a slow circle, her eyes not focusing on any one thing.
It felt as if there were a vacuum in the room that sucked every last molecule of oxygen out of her lungs, leaving her unable to breathe or function.
Everything hit her at once. Everything. The smell of the stale, dusty air and a hint of the baby-powder scent that had been Noelle’s body lotion. The almost painful silence. The sights—all the things she’d noticed the last time she’d come in here and so much more she hadn’t. She was fixated on Noelle’s side of the room, unable to look away. Like a gruesome traffic accident.
She could do this. Though what this was, exactly, she wasn’t sure. Sort through her sister’s belongings? Decide what items had no more use and what she or others might cherish?
Putting things into boxes would be measurable action. Progress.
Realizing that if she left the room to find an empty box, she would likely never make it back across the threshold, she went to the closet, which was on Noelle’s half of the room, and slid the door open. Rachel’s share—the right side—was, of course, neat and half-empty. On the floor was a stack of shoeboxes. Rachel pulled the stack out and, one by one, opened each box and dumped out the old, seldom-worn dress shoes into a pile on the closet floor. The three boxes wouldn’t be enough for Noelle’s belongings, but they would get her started with the little stuff.
Energized—relatively speaking—by having a concrete task, she went to the desk on her own side of the room and retrieved the empty wastebasket from beneath it. She carried it back and set it on the floor between Noelle’s twin-size bed and her vanity table.
The vanity was the easiest place to start. The makeup that was still lying on top of it was no longer good for anything, so Rachel sat in the dainty chair and busied herself tossing it, piece by piece, into the wastebasket, not allowing any thoughts about whose it was or why it was only half-used to barge in.
As she was systematically picking up each item, one in particular caught her attention and broke through her determination to not really see what she was handling—the bright green, sparkly eye shadow. It was so obnoxious and so uniquely Noelle. Rachel dipped her index finger into the powder and smoothed a streak onto the back of her hand. A bittersweet grin tugged at her lips as she remembered the first time she’d seen her sister wearing it, on a visit home from med school. Though Noelle had looked beautiful, as she always did either because of or in spite of her daring style choices, Rachel had joked about her aspirations of setting alien fashion trends. Noelle, of course, had come back with some insult about Rachel’s trademark “natural” look. Neither had thought more about the good-natured exchange. Rachel herself had never expected it to become a poignant memory that would threaten her composure.
Swallowing back the surge of emotion, she clamped her jaw against feeling too much and threw the eye shadow in the trash.
When the top of the vanity was bare, she opened the drawers to find Noelle’s extensive jewelry collection. Most of it was inexpensive costume jewelry and simple sterling-silver pieces, but none of it belonged in the trash. She stared at it for a couple minutes, overwhelmed. This was something she and her mom would need to sort through together and decide what to do with it.
As she started to push