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So I go downstairs.

I change into jeans and a sweater. Pull my hair into a knot at the base of my neck. Try another sip of coffee and give up after one mouthful. I grab my keys, my purse, and the storage unit key from the junk drawer in the kitchen where I shoved it years ago and never touched again.

The drive feels longer than it should.

Probably because I'm tired enough that the sunlight hurts a little. Probably because my stomach still feels vaguely wrong and empty. Probably because everything in me is dragging and the only thing keeping me upright is stubbornness and half a piece of toast.

By the time I pull into the storage facility, I'm shaking again.

Not from crying this time.

From hunger and grief and something I don't have a name for yet.

I sit in the car for a second longer than necessary, forehead resting against the steering wheel.

Then I get out.

When I roll the metal door up, my whole life is sitting there in rows. The storage unit smells like dust and old cardboard and years I tried not to think about.

Boxes labeled in my handwriting, a standing mirror from the house we had to sell, my mother's easel, three flat files of old work, and a stack of framed canvases wrapped in blankets.

For a second I just stand there.

This is the first time I've looked at any of it since the accident. Since the hospital bills. Since Dad forgot where he was and I sold the house because I didn't know what else to sell. Since grief became administrative.

I step inside slowly. My fingers find the edge of one of the canvases wrapped in an old quilt and peel it back. An oil from art school.

Big. Messy. The kind of ambitious painter I used to be. The funny thing is… it’s good. Actually really good. Good enough that Gabriel wouldn't laugh me out of a room for bringing it.

Another one leans behind it. Then another.

A still life my mother loved. A self-portrait I forgot I ever finished. A cityscape from my senior year that suddenly makes me remember exactly how certain I once was that art would be my life.

I sit down on an old banker's box because my legs stop cooperating. The tears come again, but quieter this time. Not just for Everett.

For me. For the girl who painted these and thought the world would open for her. For my mother, who would've hung every single one. For the house that held all of this before it held debt instead. For the fact that I'm sitting in a storage unit full of the life I packed away, trying to figure out whether old canvases and stubbornness are enough to start over.

And then—because apparently grief and comedy have the same damn landlord—I laugh.

Small. A little broken.

Because of course this is where I end up. Heartbroken, nauseous, starving, sitting on a box in a ten-by-ten storage unit giving myself a pep talk surrounded by art I haven't looked at in five years.

My mother would be so proud. And then she'd ask if I'd eaten, and I'd lie, and she'd know.

I wipe my face and stand back up and then I start sorting. I take photo and send them to my old curator. She loves them… wants to show them but I tell her that I'm not ready yet.

This stack stays. That stack goes in the car. Pieces that could sell. Pieces that might matter. Pieces I want to look at with clearer eyes when I'm not running on caffeine fumes and heartbreak.

By the time I'm done, the backseat is full and my arms ache and my stomach still feels wrong.

I tell myself it's because I've had three sips of coffee and half a piece of toast in the last twenty-four hours.

Which is probably true… Mostly.

I stand there in the afternoon light with my keys in my hand and my whole body feeling wrung out staring at the pieces that I can barely believe I completed.

My phone buzzes again.