Andrea went back down the stairs, her dejected footfalls heavy on the hollow steps. As she neared the bottom, she heard a slow, ominous creak coming from the first floor hallway. Clutching the banister, she slowly turned toward the sound and noticed a patch of light growing wider, illuminating the dark hallway. She approached the light, which was emanating from a small niche between the wall and the foundation of the staircase. A dark wooden door hung half-way open. Andrea stepped closer, extending a hand to open it but the door creaked open by itself, revealing a long-forgotten room.

_The blue room_, Andrea thought as she took in the barren windows streaming in sunlight that coated the walls and furniture. The walls had been painted sky blue once, but they were now a mausoleum grey, making it a graveyard filled with all their sunlit afternoons of childhood play.

A collapsed futon Andrea barely remembered using slouched in a dusty corner. The old rocking chair stood stubbornly in its old spot facing the small television, which was coated in a thick dust, its monitor dimly reflecting the scuffed wooden table at the back of the room. The oriental rug, which had always been out of place, even then, was now half-rolled and lain askew on the wooden floorboards.

Andrea had spent hours searching the house for her mother’s missing bracelet. Though she doubted she would find it in this room, she felt a tugging in her chest, as if the room were inviting her to search its nooks and crannies. Perhaps to find her mother’s bracelet. Perhaps to find other, more wonderful things long-forgotten.