I forced myself out of bed, whimpering a little when my feet hit the floor and I shoved myself to standing. I shuffled to the bathroom and was just heading to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee when my gaze landed on the patterned curtain blocking off the small dining alcove. It was the one spot I’d avoided looking since the night Cal brought me home from the funeral home. Junie’s “room,” such as it was. When Junie had been alive, I hadn’t thought much about the space. But now that she was gone, it taunted me. Not only because I associated it so strongly with my daughter, but because it was a reminder of another way I’d failed her. What child wants to grow up without a room of her own? Wants to make do with a sectioned-off portion of the living room? Even I’d had a room in the trailer growing up. I had to share it with Cal, and it was hot in the summer and cold in the winter and smelled like mildew and urine. But it was still a room. Four walls and a door. More than Junie ever had. She’d shared a room with me until she was eight and then moved into the alcove. I’d mentioned it to her sometimes, said I was sorry I couldn’t give her more, and she’d always scoffed, said she liked her space fine. It had always seemed like she meant it. But now, without her voice competing with the scolding one in my head, I found her assurances hard to believe. If she hadn’t been ashamed, then why had she so rarely invited Izzy to our apartment? And even then, only for a quick dinner or to watch a movie, never to spend the night. She always wanted to go to Izzy’s, never the other way around. That’s another thing no one tells you about dealing with death, how afterward the only voice you can hear is your own, reminding you of everything you did wrong.

I sidled over to the drawn curtain, slowly, like it was a rattler that might bite. Laid my hand gingerly on the cotton fabric. Yellow-and-white paisley. Pottery Barn. I’d done that one thing right, at least. Worked extra shifts at the diner until I could afford to let Junie pick something nice, quality, not some shiny, polyester crap from the clearance bin. It seemed a silly distinction now, but it had mattered to me at the time.

I drew the curtain back, the hooks tinkling against the wooden rod Cal had installed one snowy December night. It had been her Christmas present that year, a can of sunny yellow paint for the alcove walls, new bedding, the curtain. A small bookcase I’d rescued from the thrift store and painted white. A pink glass bedside lamp Cal’s contribution.

The room had changed very little in the ensuing years. The books on the bookcase morphing from children’s to young adult. A small dresser squeezed in against the far wall, the top littered with earrings and spare change and accumulated junk. But the tiny twin bed still had the same quilt, the pink lamp still perched on her bedside table.