Elise left the boxes untouched for a day. She stacked them neatly in the corner of the living room not hidden, but not ready to be faced again. Like they were guests she wasn’t sure how to greet. Instead, she cleaned.
Not in the hopeful, let’s-make-this-place-mine kind of way, but mechanically. She scrubbed the kitchen tiles until her knuckles turned red. She threw out a drawer full of warped Tupperware, washed curtains that disintegrated in the machine, vacuumed dust that never seemed to disappear.