Brooke: POV Shift?

She usually didn’t go into the Elliot’s room. With Eliza and Meredith she trespassed boldly–marching in like she had every right–dusting behind the blinds, shaking out the sheets, pairing their socks, vacuuming their closets. Sweeping through their bedrooms like an army inspector. And how they loathed her for it! They howled and they hollered about privacy and boundaries and nosy mothers.

She took no notice. She just hummed and told them she was “doing the cleaning.” She liked knowing that her daughters had nothing they could hide from her, nothing they could stash away that she couldn’t find.

But she usually didn’t go into Elliot’s room. Except for maybe once a week to deliver clean laundry.

His room was the smallest one, at the far end of the hallway. He kept his blinds closed in the summer. It was dark in there. He had an old cherry oak desk pushed into one corner. Stacks of fat books, maps of oceans and mountain ranges, a ceramic piggy bank clanking with quarters. He kept it fairly clean though, for a boy his age. And she didn’t like to go inside. She wasn’t sure why, but she usually felt like things worked best when she just left him well alone.

That was until she found the angels. They were pinned neatly around his headboard, littering his tabletop. Paints and brushes, jam jars filled with murky water. She was dropping off a load of fresh sheets, and there they were. Blushing lightly, swathed in color, wide eyes peering up at her from crinkled papers all around the room. Peering up from the past–a strange resurrection. Her hands were shaking, and her breath caught in her throat. She should have known that boy was up to something. The way he hid away every day. Well, now she knew where he was going. She dropped the sheets, and went straight to the attic. She started cleaning.

She shouldn’t have to feel tense like this. Shouldn’t have to wonder at every turn if the boy would turn up, if he were watching her. But somehow she knew he would find her. She was stacking the last box up with paintings when she heard his footsteps. Her skin prickled. She could feel him in the room. She heaved up the box, turned around nice and slow, letting a deceptive calm wash over her features.

There he was. Dark-haired and deliberate. Small for his age, always frowning. Her hand could fit easily around his wrists. But oh he was frowning, and his dark eyes were squinting at her. He was stopped in the doorway, a look of stunned indignation, like she was invading some sacred haven, some treasured hideaway. Didn’t he know this attic belonged to her? She could hear the words before he said them. Hear their accusatory slant.

“What are you doing?” he asked. An innocent question. But oh how he policed her.

“Just cleaning.” She smiled. Began to hum. Brushed it off.

“Why?” he asked.

“It’s a mess up here Elliot, that’s why!” She didn’t mean to sound so defensive.

“But where,” his eyes darted to the corner where the angels used to sit, then to the box of paintings in her arms, “where are you taking those?”

She began stepping forward, she wanted to skirt around him, proceed to the truck without all this questioning. She wanted the angels to disappear.

“I’m taking a whole load of stuff to Salvation Army.”

She was almost to the door. He was the only thing in her way.

“You can’t take those!”

Now she was getting angry. “Of course I can take them Elliot. They’re mine!”

She could see him start to panic. See how he started to rage. She knew he didn’t understand– had no idea.

“They aren’t yours, mom!” His voice was high and harsh. “You can’t just throw them away like that… they’re mine!”

“I don’t think you understand dear,” she lifted a painting out of the box. “They are mine.” Her fingers tapped at the corner of the painting. Elliot squinted carefully.

She was pointing to a set of initials, etched faintly in the corner: ALB. Elliot shook his head, he still didn’t understand. Of course he didn’t. He would never think, never guess. Never in a million years.

“My name,” she said quietly.

And then there it was–the slow and heavy dawning, the light bulb going off. Elliot’s face fell. ALB, Abigail Larson Blythe. “Yours,” he repeated.

“That’s right…And I don’t appreciate you just coming up here and taking my stuff.”