When Vivian cracked open the old door, it felt much heavier than the others in the rest of the house, despite being made of the same material. The moment she stepped barefoot onto the aged wood floor, she could feel the weight the air seemed to carry in here. Every particle moved sluggishly, felt stagnant on Vivian’s skin. This was the kind of air that kept time and memory preserved perfectly; almost as if it were an insect trapped in amber. The condition of the room only added to this sensation of being entrapped in a scene of the past; her mother’s bed remained tidily made, the rocking chair still sat inviting and familiar next to the bookcase, the lace curtains allowing breathy fissures of light into the room, exactly the way Vivian remembered them to.
She took long, deep breaths and allowed her chest to move up, then down, back up, and then down again, trying to take in as much of the smell of the room as she could and commit it to her memory. A faint, but present scent of lavender and lilac hung in the still air like a thin fog, similar to the one that seemed to encircle her memories of this house, of this room, of her mother. It was strange, the things that stood out clearly through the mist and the things that were blurred from her mind’s eye. It frustrated her greatly; she hated the fact that she could remember almost every detail of this room, from every perfect fold of the bed sheets to the flaking cracks in the pale orchid paint, but she couldn’t remember the look of her mother’s face, couldn’t remember the color of her eyes, couldn’t remember how her laugh sounded. To Vivian, it seemed these would be the more important memories, the ones a person could know someone by. But here she was, standing in the middle of a room in which she could remember every detail, but couldn’t for the life of her recall a memory of the person who used to occupy it. With a frustrated sigh, Vivian slumped to the floor and held her head in her hands. This was no use.
“Ahem,” Grunted a voice from the doorway. Vivian spun, startled. When she recognized who it was, she set her jaw and crossed her arms tightly in front of her, then turned away from him.
“I thought you said you’d never come back to this house.” She said, her head bowed as she intently studied the worn wooden floor before her. She refused to face him, but she heard a long, low breath exhale loudly through his nose.
“Vivian, I - ” 
“Don’t,” she cautioned, raising her head, but still staring straight ahead of her. She wouldn’t look at him. If she did it would mean she’d lost. “Don’t try to apologize to me, or tell me that you want to make things better between us; you can’t. Don’t waste your breath trying.”
For a long while, it was silent. Her father didn’t utter another word, and neither did she; the only sounds were that of their breathing and the autumn day outside, whispering through the lace curtains in sunlit fractals of bird chirps and the wind swirling through the golden leaves of the elm tree. Illuminated dust particles floated lazily around her, and Vivian watched them closely with a strange, numb feeling creeping into her limbs. She worked vigorously to push down the lump rising in her throat as she followed the drifting flecks’ sleepy route through the thick, still air, but it wouldn’t seem to go away. A single tear paved a tiny, damp track down her cheek, and she sniffled. The sound was like a gunshot, and the silence was shattered.
In heavy footsteps her father walked to her, and sat down beside Vivian with a sigh. Peeking a glance at him from the corner of her eye, Vivian watched him pull his long legs up to his chest, and circle them with his arms, as if trying to hold himself together. She watched him then rest his chin on his knees, and meet her eyes. The instant he did she looked away, back at the floor. She wrung her hands, then ran a fingertip over each nail on one hand, then did the same to the other. She traced each line in her palm with a light finger, then traced them all again. She did her best to ignore her father next to her, until his deep voice disturbed the quiet once more.
“She used to do that you know,” he said, and Vivian looked up, meeting his blue gaze. He motioned to her hands. “She used to play with her hands like that, all the time. We used to joke about how she dropped her wedding ring down the drain because she was fiddling with her hands over the sink.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” he chuckled lightly. “It took me an hour and a half to get it out of there. I just about had to tear the whole plumbing apart to get that little thing.”
Vivian raised an eyebrow and gave him a look. “You’re joking.”
“Am not!” He said with a laugh, raising his hands in surrender. “I swear, the entire kitchen was covered in pieces of pipe and screws and whatnot and your mother was just laughing like there was no tomorrow. God, did she ever think it was funny; she wasn’t even mad about almost losing her ring. She just thought it was so ridiculous to have all those pieces lying about everywhere and to see me all scrunched up under that sink with my hands scrabbling around in the pipe for her ring. I don’t think I’d ever seen her laugh that hard.” As he finished, he spoke quieter and a soft smile formed on his lips. Vivian could see him remembering her. She wanted to ask him, What did it sound like? Did she throw her head back when she laughed that hard? Or, What did her eyes look like when she laughed, did they light up the way I could almost picture them to? But instead, Vivian only asked him something small, something easy and simple to answer.
She asked him, “Did she laugh a lot?”
Vivian knew it wasn’t exactly the kind of question that would suddenly unlock her memories of her mother, but maybe it was a start.