Chapter 10: When Walls Remember
755 Words
Construction entered its final stretch. The old house that had once sagged with silence was now waking up, plank by plank, breath by breath. The walls were patched, but not smoothed. Selina refused to erase the cracks completely. “A house,” she told Damien, “should remember.”
Outside, jasmine had been planted along the front walkway. Bougainvillea stretched greedily toward new trellises. Inside, the wooden beams had been sanded clean, the attic transformed into a studio flooded with natural light. The listening room had been soundproofed with layers of cork and hushed fabric, each panel installed with deliberate care. The creaks of the floorboards, though, were allowed to remain. "Some sounds are sacred," Damien had said.
Yet despite the beauty blooming within and without, Selina found herself pulled inward more than ever.
The nights grew heavier, longer. She would lie awake listening to the house settle around her, the quiet groans of old timber shifting like the murmurs of memory.
And there was the question.
What comes after the house?
She was sketching in the attic when Damien told her.
“A letter arrived,” he said, standing in the doorway. “From Paris.”
Selina looked up slowly, charcoal smudged on her fingertips. “The fellowship?”
He nodded.
“It’s real. They want me. Studio space, mentorship, gallery exhibition. Six months.”
She swallowed. “That’s… incredible.”
“I haven’t said yes.”
Her brows furrowed. “Why not?”
“Because I’m afraid of leaving this. Leaving you.”
Selina set down her pencil.
“Then let’s be honest,” she said. “You’re not afraid of leaving. You’re afraid that what we’ve built might not survive the distance.”
Damien looked at her, eyes gentle. “Am I wrong?”
“No,” she whispered. “But that doesn’t mean we stop.”
Over the next few days, they tiptoed around the topic, trying to savor the final phase of the project without letting the future unmoor them. They hung doors together. Varnished banisters. Argued about where to place a mosaic that Damien had insisted on installing in the central hall—"A heartbeat made of tile," he called it.
The house had become their language.
And yet, in every action, there was a trace of goodbye.
The night before his departure, Selina called her mother.
“I’m letting him go,” she said simply.
Uyen was quiet on the other end. Then, softly, “Sometimes love is the wind, not the anchor.”
Selina closed her eyes. “I’m scared it won’t be enough.”
“You taught yourself to survive in silence,” Uyen said. “Now you’re learning to speak through letting go.”
That final evening, Damien lit candles in every room. The house glowed with amber warmth, shadows dancing like old ghosts soothed at last.
They sat in the studio, backs against the far wall, legs stretched out on the polished floor.
Selina handed him a notebook. Inside were her personal sketches—some he’d seen, most he hadn’t. Drawings of him, of the house, of quiet moments only she had noticed.
“Take this,” she said. “So when you miss this place, you’ll remember that it saw you too.”
Damien turned the pages with reverent hands. “You drew my sadness.”
“And your joy. And your stubbornness.”
He laughed softly, then turned serious. “I love you, Selina. You’re not a project. You’re a foundation.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks, not from pain but from the weight of being seen.
“I love you too. But I won’t follow you to Paris.”
“I never wanted you to.”
He leaned in and kissed her—not urgently, not hungrily. But like sealing a blueprint. A promise in flesh and breath.
Before dawn, she walked him to the gate.
The car waited. The sky was just beginning to blush.
He turned to her one last time.
“When I come back…” he began.
Selina stopped him with a smile. “When you come back, the door will be open.”
He got in. The car disappeared into the sleepy city.
Selina stood at the threshold of the house. Her house. Their house.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t move for a long time.
Then she walked inside and began rearranging furniture.
Because life didn’t pause for longing. It demanded courage.
And the walls? They remembered everything.
Especially how to begin again.
To Be Continued...
- Writer
