Chapter Text
Maddie bit her lip and looked over her shoulder, listening hard to make sure neither of her parents were coming up the stairs. Evan was napping and, when she’d checked, both of her parents were downstairs. Her dad had gone outside to the shed in the backyard and her mom was reading in the living room. Even with the carpet on the stairs, she should be able to hear them if they suddenly decided to come upstairs.
Because she wasn’t supposed to be in here. Mom and Dad’s room was off limits so she definitely wasn’t supposed to be in their closet. She’d have to try and hide if she heard them coming but hopefully this wouldn’t take long.
But Maddie missed Daniel and she knew that Mom had talked Dad into getting rid of basically everything that had belonged to him and the pictures that Daniel was in had been thrown out. She was hoping that maybe, just maybe, they’d saved some pictures or some of his drawings or, well, anything for themselves. And maybe they’d notice if she took one but maybe she could get away with taking one for herself. Or she could at least look at them and remember.
It’d only been a month since Daniel had died but Maddie felt like it was already getting hard to remember what he looked like before he got sick.
So, Maddie was on a mission to find something of Daniel in this closet. They couldn’t have gotten rid of everything.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Where would they put them?”
Her eyes scanned along the shelves and she paused when she saw two small wooden chests on one of the upper shelves. She’d never seen those before. She hesitated and crept back to the closet door and leaned out, listening to be sure everything was still quiet, before she went back to stare at the shelves.
Maddie huffed. They were too high for her to just be able to grab them. She could climb up there, she knew. She was a good climber. She and Daniel had climbed trees together every chance they could get away with it. But she’d probably drop the chests if she tried to bring either of them down.
After a few moments, her eyes lit up. The chair that Mom sat in when she put on her jewelry would work. She called it a vanity chair. Maddie had moved it before and it wasn’t heavy enough that she’d have to drag it so she wouldn’t be heard. She quickly moved back into the bedroom and headed straight for the chair. It took her a few minutes to move it into the closet because she kept pausing to check for any sign of her parents coming up the stairs but eventually, she had the chair exactly where she needed it.
It didn’t take long before she had both chests down on the floor. One had her name in a pretty font and there was a pink flower near her name. The other had Daniel’s name in a similar font and there was a bunny near his name.
This had to be it.
With another glance at the door, Maddie opened the chest with Daniel’s name. It was full of things from when Daniel was a baby. Baby shoes, a onesie, a little hospital bracelet. Then things from when he was older like pictures and drawings and class award certificates. A couple of small art projects. She picked up a picture of Daniel on his bike and flipped it over, reading the back. 4th of July, 1988 was scrawled across the back of the picture in her mom’s writing.
Maddie looked down in the box and took in how it didn’t look like it’d been looked through at all in awhile and decided that it should be fine to keep the picture.
Except...what if her mom found the picture? Dad wouldn’t but Mom might since she was more likely to clean and put things away and if Maddie put it in a bad hiding spot...
Maybe, Maddie decided, it’d be better to hide it in the box with her name on it.
Nodding to herself, she opened her box and paused as she took in the contents. It was like Daniel’s, holding things from when she was a baby and things from the last few years. She tucked the picture of Daniel in along the side, making sure the picture was facing the side of the chest, then rummaged through the contents. Baby shoes, hospital bracelet, a little dress, drawings, pictures, even some of the jewelry she’d made when decided to experiment.
Shutting both chests, Maddie frowned as she turned and looked back up at the chest. There were only two. She stood and turned in a slow circle, trying to spot a third chest and tensed when she didn’t see one.
There wasn’t an Evan chest.
Maddie had known, of course, that her parents weren’t...good with Evan. They paid attention when people were around but they generally left him alone and it was usually just her and Evan together.
He should have a chest. She had one and Daniel had one and he was their brother so he should have one too. But they hadn’t made one. And with the kind of things that were in the chests, Evan should already have one. With his name and a little cow on it. Evan loved cows; he took his stuffed cow everywhere.
Maddie’s eyes watered as she thought of Evan being left out, of their parents deciding none of his things should be kept. It hurt something inside to think about it, especially when she thought of how happy Evan usually was. He’d been sad after Daniel died because he didn’t understand why Daniel suddenly wasn’t there anymore. He was too young to understand and he probably wouldn’t ever remember.
She flipped Daniel’s chest open again and rummaged through them until she found a picture that surprised her. It was her and Daniel and Evan. It was one of the few pictures where Daniel didn’t look as sick as he usually did. She didn’t know which of her parents had saved this but she was going to take it and keep it for Evan. He deserved to see this when he was bigger and see how Daniel hugged him close.
She carefully closed Daniel’s chest then debated what to do with the picture before she opened hers and tucked the picture with the other picture of Daniel. She didn’t want to risk her Mom finding that one either.
Satisfied now that she’d found the picture she was looking for and found one for Evan too, she quickly placed the chests in the exact spots she’d gotten them from. Heart pounding, she returned the chair back to her Mom’s vanity and made sure it didn’t look like it’d been moved at all before she snuck out of the room. She paused in the hallway and let out a quiet sigh of relief when she still didn’t hear anything.
Breathing a little easier, she paused outside of Evan’s room and slipped inside, moving towards his crib to check on him. She glanced at the baby monitor and made sure to keep quiet so her mom wouldn’t know she was in the room.
A small smile appeared on her face as she looked down at Evan. He was on his back, one hand stretched over his head and the other reaching towards the bars of the crib, legs curled slightly. She and Daniel had agreed that they had the cutest little brother.
I’m going to make you a chest, she thought. She couldn’t get his hospital bracelet obviously but there were two onesies that she was going to take now since Evan was on the verge of outgrowing them and she knew that Mom didn’t like them anyway. Daniel had convinced Dad to let them each pick out a onesie for Evan as a birthday gift. Maddie had chosen one that had a goose on a scooter, wearing a baseball hat, that said “Silly goose on the loose” under the picture. Daniel had gleefully chosen one with a giraffe on it that said “You bet giraffe I’m cute.” It had actually made Dad laugh but she knew that Mom didn’t like them even though she’d smiled at them. And Evan was growing so fast that he wouldn’t fit them soon and Mom would just give them away so this was a much better choice.
Decision made, she moved to Evan’s dresser and dug through the onesies until she found the two she wanted at the bottom of the drawer. She hugged them to her chest and, after a moment of debating with herself, she grabbed the little blue sneakers that were getting harder to put on Evan anyway since she was pretty sure they had started to pinch his toes so he fussed whenever he had to wear them.
Maddie didn’t hesitate to leave the room and head straight to hers. She had the same problem that she’d had with the pictures. She didn’t want Mom getting rid of the stuff she was going to save for Evan.
She considered trying to sneak the items into her chest for a few moments before dismissing that. Evan’s nap would be over soon and while Mom would come up to get him when she heard him, she’d act annoyed when she did so Maddie wanted to be the one that went in there first. Evan was always happy when he woke up from a nap and ready to take on the world, calling out as soon as he saw her.
Which meant she needed to hide it somewhere in her room.
“Oh,” Maddie breathed as she realized where she could put the onesies and shoes. She darted towards her closet and pulled out the little suitcase that she’d been given a couple years ago. Mom would never look in here because they weren’t going on any trips. She carefully set everything in the suitcase before zipping it up and moving it to the back of the closet.
That would do until she could save up her allowance money and buy a chest to put them in.