The faded floral wallpaper still bore the stains of sticky hand prints, the first of many paintings to come. The long kitchen table spoke to endless hours doing schoolwork and fun-filled family dinners complete with kicks where mom and dad couldn’t see. The bed upstairs still creaked from that first weekend alone when Johnny had come over to play grownup doctor. The TV still remembered the endless days it had been left on while she cried over her parents accident. The empty walls still knew where wedding pictures with Jim, not Johnny, used to hang. The lawn still hadn’t completely recovered from the countless yellow trucks that she had tripped over on her way to work. There was still a space on the mantle for her son’s graduation and wedding pictures of his own. A coffee cup bearing her husband’s name lay in the back of a cupboard forgotten to everyone except her. The rocking chair she used to sit on had creaked along in time to her heart until it too had stopped.