The first Saturday after the divorce was final, Kaylee and I tore out the weight bench and the treadmill together.
We carried them out to the curb in pieces. Kaylee unscrewed the mirror from the wall herself, with my cordless drill, and she didn’t hand it back to me when she was done. She just stood there looking at the four holes it left in the drywall.
“Mom picked this color,” she said quietly, putting her hand flat on the pale yellow wall. “Grandma told me. She said Mom painted it herself when she was eight months pregnant, and Daddy yelled at her for being on a ladder.”
“I did yell,” I said. “She didn’t listen. She never listened.”
Kaylee laughed. “Sounds like somebody I know.”
We spackled the holes. We bought two gallons of the exact same pale yellow from the paint store on Georgia Street. The man at the counter had to match it from a chip Kaylee peeled off the wall behind where the mirror used to hang.
We painted all weekend with the windows open and the radio on. We got paint in our hair. We got paint on the dog. We ate pizza sitting on the drop cloth in the middle of the floor.
On Sunday night, we put her bed back together. Her bookshelf. Her softball trophies. A picture of Amy holding her on the first day of kindergarten, which Kaylee had kept hidden in the camper under a loose board the whole five weeks.
When it was finished, Kaylee stood in her bedroom doorway, holding the baby monitor.
The parent unit. The one with the little green light. The one she’d taped to a camper wall in the freezing dark and listened to for thirty-one nights.
She looked at it for a long time.
“I don’t need this anymore,” she said.
She handed it to me.
Then she walked over to her nightstand. She took the other half, the transmitter, out of a shoebox, and she set it down next to her lamp and plugged it in.
The little green light came on.
“But you can keep it,” she said. “Just in case you want to hear me sometimes.”
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.