THE HOUSE WE KEPT

Chapter 5: The Room With Light

Dreo’s POV

I heard the board come off before I saw her.

The sound was soft, but I know the sound of that wood. I put it there myself. I nailed it in with the idea that some rooms should stay closed until the person inside is ready to open them, and Lina was not ready. Or at least, that was what I told myself.

I climbed down from the roof slow. I told myself to wait. To give her the room. To not be the kind of man who checks on a woman the moment she makes a choice he does not understand.

But I went in anyway.

She was standing in the pink room with her back to me, looking at the light that was falling across the wall in a long, thin line. The board was on the floor beside her like something discarded. She did not turn when I came in.

“You should put it back,” I said, because that was the safe thing to say.

“I know,” she said, and her voice was quiet in a way that made me stay instead of leave.

So I came in.

I did not touch the board. I stood next to her instead, close enough to see the way the light caught the side of her face, far enough that I could pretend I was only there for the house.

“The light is nice,” I said, because it was true.

She nodded. She did not look at me.

I wanted to ask her why she took it off. I wanted to ask if the room was less heavy now, or if it was heavier because the light made her see what she had been avoiding. I wanted to ask a hundred things.

I said none of them.

“Leave it,” I said instead. “We’ll put glass in later. If there’s time.”

If there’s time.

The words felt like a lie the moment they left my mouth. Because I was starting to think there would not be time. Because two weeks was never going to be enough to fix a house, and it was definitely not enough to fix whatever was broken in her.

But I said it anyway.

---

I found the glass at the old sari-sari store.

It was not new. It was scratched and uneven and one corner had a crack that would never come out. But it was glass. And it was free if I took the whole frame with me.

I cleaned it for an hour. I cut it twice to make it fit. I told myself I was doing it because a house with a broken window is not a house you can sell, but the truth was I wanted her to have light. I wanted her to stop living like she was in a room that was waiting to be buried.

She held the frame while I set the glass.

Her hands were under mine. Steady. Cold.

“Careful,” I said, when her thumb got too close to the edge.

“I’m careful,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “I’m just saying it anyway.”

Because I was afraid.

Not of the glass.

Of her.

Of the way she looked at the light like it was something she did not deserve.

We set the window.

It was not perfect. The crack stayed. But when the light came through, it scattered into pieces on the floor, and for a second the room looked less like a ruin and more like a place someone could breathe in.

She looked at it for a long time without speaking.

I did not speak either.

---

Aling Teresing gave me the lamp.

“Para kay Lina,” she said. “Luma ‘yan ni Rosa. Baka kailanganin niya.”

I took it because Aling would not take no for an answer, and because I was already looking for reasons to go back to that room after dark.

I brought the tea too.

She said she did not need help sleeping. She was lying. I could see it in her eyes. The kind of tired that does not go away with a blanket or a locked door.

I sat on the floor because the chair was broken and because sitting on the floor meant I was not above her. I was not a contractor. I was just a man with tea.

We did not talk.

The lamp made her face softer. It made the room smaller. It made me forget, for a few minutes, that I was supposed to leave in two weeks.

---

The rain came hard that night.

I was outside checking the trench because if the water pooled under the floor, everything we did would rot. My shirt was soaked through and my hands would not stop shaking from the cold.

She opened the door before I could knock.

“You’ll get sick,” she said.

“I’m fine,” I said, which was another lie.

She took the rag from the table and started wiping my hair. Then my face. Her hands were careful. They were warm.

I should have stopped her.

I didn’t.

When she was done, I caught her wrist. Not because I wanted her to stop. Because if she kept touching me like that, I was not going to be able to pretend this was only about the house.

“You don’t have to take care of me,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

“Then why are you?”

She did not answer.

I let go.

We sat on the floor with the lamp between us and the rain loud on the roof, and I thought about how easy it would be to reach across that space. I did not.

---

Mimi came with a book.

She read about a house learning how to be happy again. She said it was like Lina’s room.

I was on the porch when she read that part. The hammer stopped in my hand.

Because she was right.

The room was lighter.

And Lina was too.

Not much.

But enough that I noticed.

When Mimi left, she left the book. Lina put it by the lamp like it belonged there.

---

I found her with the necklace.

She was sitting on the floor, holding the sunflower pendant like it might break if she held it too hard.

“It was hers,” she said, without looking up.

“I know,” I said.

“She used to say sunflowers follow the light.”

I looked at the window. At the crack. At the pieces of light on the floor.

“Then maybe you should too,” I said.

I did not look at her when I said it. Because if I did, she would see it. She would see that I was not talking about Lola Rosa. I was talking about her.

She did not answer.

---

That night, I sat on the porch.

The door was unlocked.

I knew because I tested it once, after she went to bed. The latch gave under my hand. She had not locked it.

I could have gone in.

I did not.

I sat on the porch instead.

Because she was learning how to leave a door open.

And I was learning how to not walk through it until she asked me to.

I heard her breathing slow down through the thin wood.

She slept.

I stayed awake.

Not because I was guarding her.

Because I did not want to miss the sound of a woman who finally stopped waiting to leave.

---

In the morning, she came out.

“Morning,” she said.

“Morning,” I said.

The light was coming through the window.

The room was still standing.

And I was still here.

I did not know what that meant yet.

But I knew it meant something.

---

*End Chapter 5