The Red Door

After her husband left for a younger woman, Joan became fixated on the house. She worried about the curtains. She worried about the dining table and who would take it. Most of all she worried about the front door, which she had painted red herself one June, and who would get to keep walking through it.

Her friends thought she was avoiding the real loss. They were right.

The house was easier to grieve than the marriage. Walls did not lie to her. Floors did not send messages at midnight. Cabinets never promised to change.

In the end she sold it and moved into a one-bedroom apartment over a flower shop. There was no dining room. There was barely space for two chairs.

But the stairwell smelled like eucalyptus and cut stems every morning. She started taking long walks before work. She joined a community choir, though she had not sung since college. At some point, without deciding to, she stopped looking at his social media.

A year after she moved in, she asked the landlord for permission and painted her apartment door red.

This time the color was not about a family or a house. It was only hers.