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I stood in her doorway, staring down the hallway at the photos of my life with Liz that lined the wall to my right. I looked to my left. This wall was completely empty; I was waiting to paint it before I started covering it with memories, too. The door to my bedroom was closed, just as it had been for the past five and a half months. I’d managed to almost completely avoid stepping foot inside since returning from our trip to Minnesota in June. I looked down at the multicolored paper cranes that had been hanging from a string on the doorknob since the day of Liz’s funeral, and I decided that tonight was the night. It was time to move from the couch; it was time to go back to my bed.

Holding my breath and closing my eyes, I opened the door to the bedroom. I breathed the room in for the first time in months, smelling the mixture of Liz’s perfumes. The individual scents of Beautiful by Estée Lauder, Glamorous by Ralph Lauren, and that Marc Jacobs perfume without the name. I opened my eyes, and the room was just as I’d left it five months ago. Her closet door was cracked open, but I avoided looking inside, unwilling to lay my eyes on her piles of dirty laundry or the bags of clothes back from the dry cleaners waiting for her to jump into them.

I looked at the wall on my side of the bed. Hanging there was a photo from our high school days that Deb had given us as a wedding gift back in 2005. We were sitting on the dock at the Goodmans’ cabin, and I was demonstrating to Liz how she should put a worm on the hook at the end of the fishing line. I was laughing; she was squirming. It was such a perfect representation of our life together.

I looked around at the furniture, a bunch of rickety used shit we got from one of Liz’s coworkers. We both hated it and had vowed to replace it as soon as we had the money and time to do so. It would be my next redecorating project.

I could see a note on her dresser, the one I had written to her promising a new necklace from Tiffany’s for Valentine’s Day. I’d been so busy with work and with taking care of her that I hadn’t been able to pick one up in time. Liz understood, and she was just grateful to have me around to wait on her during her bed rest. But she sure as hell would have collected on that as soon as our life had stabilized.

Everything in the room was so familiar, yet it felt then that I’d discovered a set of ancient ruins after hacking my way through the thickest of jungle plants.

I looked at the bed. Damn, that thing looked comfortable, especially after so many months on the couch. We had been so happy to finally have a king-sized bed after years of sleeping together in the full bed I purchased back in grad school. I used to imagine us, the three of us, watching Saturday morning cartoons in this bed, but not Pokémon and all that other modern anime shit, no. I wanted Madeline exposed to the cartoons I watched as a kid: The Jetsons, The Smurfs, Woody Woodpecker, and of course, the good old-fashioned violence of Tom and Jerry. I sat down on the edge of the bed and let the numbness overcome me. I wasn’t sad, and I wasn’t crying. I sort of felt relieved that I had finally walked back in here.

I brought Madeline’s bassinet in from the living room and placed it next to what was my side of the bed. My side of the bed now was what used to be Liz’s side of the bed. Without waking Maddy, I moved her from the car seat to the bassinet and covered her with the blanket my mom had given her. The ceiling fan was spinning fast enough to distract me from the silence; I lay there, doing my best to count the revolutions.

I couldn’t help but feel proud. Over the past week I’d managed to survive the barrage of memories that came with Thanksgiving and another trip back to Minnesota. I had given away a big chunk of money to help someone else. I had once again traveled alone with my child. And now, I was finally back in our bed. As I drifted off to sleep, my phone rang, scaring the shit out of me. I looked at the clock before