“I couldn’t fix it for you,” she said, “but it breaks my heart that you carried it all alone for so long.” After that they spoke every Wednesday, about ordinary things — recipes, homework, Emmett’s chess tournaments, Etta’s chaotic art.
In December the registry made it final: half the main house legally belonged to the children’s trust.
And before Christmas, Etta made another drawing.
The house in the center.
Harriet in her red dress.
Emmett tall.
Blythe and Harlan by a Christmas tree.
Weston still off to the side — but no longer in faint pencil.
This time he was filled in, in bright color.
“Dad lives in a different apartment,” Etta explained, “but he’s still part of our drawing.”
Harriet stood looking at that drawing for a long time, because she understood what it was, and it was more than a child’s picture.
Etta had drawn, without knowing it, the exact map of what had been rebuilt and what had not, and she had gotten every detail right.
Weston was in color again — which meant the months of Saturdays had done their slow work, that a seven-year-old had begun, cautiously, to fill her father back in, to let him have color in her world again.
But he was still off to the side.