Then Rachel showed me the watercolors she'd been doing in Elena's kitchen, and something shifted. Not jealousy, exactly. More like recognition. I used to draw all the time in high school. Charcoal portraits, mostly. I'd completely forgotten.

That weekend, I opened the spare room door. The smell hit me first—stale air and old cardboard. The room had good bones, though. Two tall windows facing east. Original wood floors under the boxes. A radiator that actually worked. I stood there for a long time, just looking at the light.

Clearing it out was harder than I thought. Not physically—although hauling boxes to the basement wasn't fun—but emotionally. Every box I opened was a reminder of things I'd been putting off. Old textbooks from a degree I never finished. Art supplies from a phase I'd abandoned. A sketchbook with three drawings in it, the rest of the pages blank.

I found my old charcoals at the bottom of a plastic bin. They were dried out, mostly unusable. I ordered new ones that night. —  Sarah Mitchell

It took three weekends. Sorting, hauling, deciding what mattered. Maya came over one Saturday with coffee and helped me carry furniture down the narrow stairs. "What are you going to do with it?" she asked. I told her I didn't know yet. That was only half true.

I painted the walls myself. Not white—something warmer. Elena calls it "the color of old paper." I found a small wooden desk at a yard sale in Ravenswood for twenty-five dollars. Bill helped me sand it down and re-stain it. "This is good wood," he said, running his hand over the grain. "Someone made this to last."

The room isn't fancy. There's the desk, an old chair I reupholstered badly, a lamp I bought new because I deserved one thing that wasn't secondhand. I hung my old drawings on the wall, even the ones that embarrass me. Especially those.

I draw in there most mornings now, before work. Nothing good, mostly. Studies of the view from the window. The radiator. My coffee cup. Emma saw some of my sketches once when she stopped by and said, "These are really looking." Not "good." Looking. Like they were paying attention.

Tom asked me why I needed a whole room just for drawing. I told him I didn't need it. But having a place that's just for making things—a place I cleared out and claimed for myself—it matters. It's not about the art. It's about the room. About deciding that I'm allowed to have space for something that doesn't earn money or serve a practical purpose. Something that's just mine.

The door stays open now. Sometimes Jordan stops by and sits in there to read while I draw. Sometimes it's just me and the morning light coming through those tall windows. Either way, it's the best room in the house.

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