where only the sweetest words remain

chapter twenty-one

September 2034

The tail end of summer brings longer nights, but also mercifully cooler temperatures, and smaller crowds as kids go back to school and tourists return to their homes.

It also brings the transition of Carla and Samuel moving into their new house.

She looks around the apartment, her chest constricting. Aside from a few errant pieces of furniture and some boxes that haven't been loaded into their rental truck yet, it's mostly empty. It hasn't been this bare in here in a while, not since Samuel bought the place. She can still remember what it was like to see it for the first time, how it felt; that specific sort of innocent excitement bubbling between the two of them as he showed her throughout each room.

A tiny, bittersweet smile forms on her lips while she absently begins retracing their old steps. The living room, the kitchen, their bedroom. Carla stands in the doorway of the latter and takes everything in, as if she's trying to commit it to memory. As if she can't already picture it perfectly with her eyes shut, even if the image contains her and Samuel's bed pushed up against the wall, the mirror standing in the corner, the little chair resting in the wall nook. When she opens her eyes again, it's like looking at a canvas stripped of its paint.

Of their own accord, her feet pull her away. She slowly wanders down the hall until she reaches Eva's room.

It's ironic, given how their daughter is only three years old, but out of the entire apartment, this is the area that feels the most lived in. This room had started out as a simple office for Carla and Samuel to work out of, and ended up as a tornado of sleepless nights changing diapers and feeding a newborn, of scattered toys and used crayons; of mismatched clothes and costumes. They'd uncovered so many other lost and forgotten things when they were packing it up last week too. It's hard to believe how four walls could contain so much chaos.

Carla walks up to the mural. Hesitantly, she reaches her fingers out towards it, following the paths and curves of each butterfly wing and flower petal. She stands there, just reflecting, until she's drawn out of her thoughts by a gentle creaking coming from behind her.

"Hey, I think that's everything. Are you ready to... Carla?"

She turns. "Hm?"

Samuel offers a tentative smile as he approaches her. Whatever it was that he was going to say is abandoned in favor of asking, "You okay?"

Facing forward again, her head dips in a little nod.

"Yeah. Just thinking." She lets her hand fall back to her side, and glances around once more. "It's weird seeing this room so empty, isn't it?"

He hums in agreement, lips twitching humorously. "Especially now that Eva's bed is gone, you can see the little dent in the wall from when Nano and I were setting it up."

Carla stares at him in surprise. "The what?"

"Well, we don't have to focus on that right now," he says quickly, shifting a bit to the side in what she suspects is an attempt to block the apparent dent that she's only just finding out about. Her eyes narrow.

"You two learned absolutely nothing from building that fucking crib, did you?"

"That crib was perfectly fine," Samuel argues, hands settling on her lower back and massaging gently. He flashes an innocent grin. "But no. We did not."

Despite herself, Carla snorts a soft laugh and allows him to pull her into his side. She leans her head on his shoulder. The mirth gradually fades from her expression.

"It's hard saying goodbye to this place," she murmurs.

"I know." He rubs her arm. "We are keeping it though, remember?"