It was the musty, dark garage with two tiny windows. Sort of square-ish in shape.
No one needed a guru to tell what Aaliyah’s favorite place had been. To her, it had been the world. It had seemed that the whole earth with all its seven billion people fit into that tiny, often overlooked room. And now that she was gone, it felt so odd.
No one had ever understood why she liked the room. Daniel vividly remembered all the times he had met his daughter huddled up in the corner, staring out the oblong-ish windows. He had wanted to pull her out, wanted her to have friends other than his old tools. It had bothered him what the gloomy room was doing to his daughter’s psyche. And so now, it felt quite weird now that he was sitting here looking at those same old tools, wishing that she had been huddled in that corner like the past nine years.
But like it seemed, Aaliyah was never coming back to her favorite place.
To the far left was a box covered with tarp. Daniel frowned, not liking how he couldn’t recall ever putting it in there. It was greenish-blue in color, something Aaliyah would call Aqua. He walked over and pulled it off, unveiling something that struck him somewhere between marvelous and sad.
It was full of her paintings. Those of the sky, the earth, and the rain. Colors that were familiar enough to send tears falling. Tears that hadn’t fallen even when his little girl had stopped breathing.
His chest felt hot, something wedging in there, as he remembered all the times he had thought this room unnecessary and his daughter as strange. But there was no going back, was there? It was sad. Regret, the dark green kind.
Daniel was sure he could have done better. Pitiful, perhaps. And even sadder was that that was all it could ever be.
