Dad looked at the doorway.
“I suppose they might.”
“Can we take the wall with us?”
He laughed, but his eyes looked tired.
“No, sweetheart. I don’t think the landlord would appreciate that.”
I started crying.
Dad put down the pencil he’d been holding and crouched in front of me.
“But listen to me,” he said. “A house is just walls. What makes it a home is the people who fill it with love.”
“But it’s our home.”
“I know.”
He pulled me against his chest.
“We’ll make another one.”
I believed him.
For years, I waited for that promise to come true.
It never did.
We moved into a smaller rental on the other side of town. The kitchen had no windows, the bedrooms were cramped, and the backyard was little more than a strip of dirt behind the building.
Dad tried to make it feel familiar.
He painted birds above the kitchen window because he remembered how much I loved the ones in our old house. He built me a small wooden shelf for my stuffed animals and found an old swing at a yard sale, repairing it with the same patience he gave everything he touched.
