The Sanctum is an upstairs room in the Walker family home where Lennie plays music, receives reminders of Joe, and experiences Bailey’s absence in increasingly tangible ways. Its significance shifts from a private refuge for sound and memory to a space whose quiet registers the permanence of loss.

Setting and Use

Lennie goes upstairs to The Sanctum rather than join Gram and Uncle Big for dinner with Toby. There, she unpacks and assembles her clarinet and plays Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose,” a song she and Joe had listened to the previous night. The room offers a place to withdraw from an uncomfortable encounter and immerse herself in music, though that solitude is soon interrupted when Toby enters and sits on Bailey’s bed.

Music and Longing

The Sanctum also holds Lennie’s response to Joe’s music. After finding the rain-damp sheet music he has written for her, she plays its melody repeatedly until she knows it by heart. At two in the morning, the music’s pleasure gives way to an acute desire for Bailey: Lennie wishes her sister were sprawled on her bed so she could talk about Joe and play her the new piece. The room contains both the excitement of a new connection and the absence of the sister with whom Lennie wants to share it.

A Space Changed by Absence

As days pass, The Sanctum grows quieter for Lennie even when she plays the stereo, talks with Sarah, or practices Stravinsky. The sound that returns most insistently is her memory of Bailey’s casket being lowered into the ground. Bailey’s absence is also registered through ordinary details: Lennie no longer expects to hear her heels in the hallway or see her reading on her bed, and the clothes in Bailey’s closet no longer retain Bailey’s scent. Eventually, Bailey’s cell phone service is disconnected as well.

These changes make The Sanctum more than a backdrop to Lennie’s grief. Its familiar beds, closet, and sounds preserve the shape of shared life while showing how memory’s physical traces can fade. The room’s growing quiet marks Lennie’s reluctant adjustment to living without Bailey, an adjustment she resents even as it becomes part of her daily surroundings.