This is from a RBWG prompt, “Write about your character picking up items in a room.”

She picked up the spoon rest from the stovetop. In the shape of a sunflower, obviously an amateur’s art project, the yellow from the petals had run down into the brown seeping up from the flower’s center. Their mingling created a color reminiscent of manure. The stem was two different shades of green, perhaps to give depth? But they, too, had run together prior to the glazing process. A chunk was broken off the bottom right corner of the stem.
So ugly, so clunky, Nancy hated even holding it.
She looked around the kitchen. Warm afternoon sunlight filled the room from its two best features—a large window looking out to the backyard and another one, with lead panes, overlooking the side yard. Everything else about the room was terrible. Barb, Jeff’s first wife, his dead wife, had not decorated. Nothing matched—a white refrigerator, cream dishwasher, black stove, a faux wood microwave (how old was that thing?). From the black, white, and red checkered linoleum to the dark wood cabinets to the outdated wallpaper border of different species of birds, the whole thing gave her a headache.
“Let’s move,” she’d said to Jeff. They’d just returned from their beach wedding in the Bahamas and were unpacking their suitcases. Two weeks in the simple cabana, steps to the turquoise waters, a double hammock on the shady porch, with a man so perfect she wouldn’t have dared dream him up, had filled her with…. She couldn’t even think of the appropriate word. Contentment, maybe? Not strong enough. Joy. Yes. Joy. It’d taken thirty-six years to find him. All the jerks she’d been through, the gamesmanship, the lies, the jealousies, pettiness. But with Jeff, it’d been so simple. He didn’t hide his loneliness, his sadness, his need to fill the empty spot beside him. And she’d simply walked into it. But coming back here, to this house with nothing of her in it, her joy began seeping away.
He didn’t want to move though. “Not the right time,” he’d said, turning to put an incorrectly folded T-shirt in the drawer. She fought the urge to walk over and refold it. Then he’d turned back towards her. With his soft, low voice that sounded like a caress he said, “I know you might not be comfortable here yet. It has to be  hard for you.” He looked around the bedroom. The memories he must have in this room made her grit her teeth. He took a deep breath and let it out. “Make it yours. Whatever you need to do.”
It had turned into her full-time job.
She sighed and shifted her weight to her other hip as she flipped over the sunflower, wondering which of Jeff’s kids made this awful thing, wondering whose permission she’d have to ask to get rid of it.
A smile drew up the corners of her lips. Her shoulders relaxed. “Made by Barb” was scrawled in fat brush strokes along the underside of the stem, followed by an attempt at a smiley face.
Did it have a story? Nancy was sure it did. Probably a mother/daughter trip to the ceramic store or maybe a Brownie field trip or some other sweet, selfless thing. She was tired of asking Jeff about these items—the bear-shaped cookie jar with the broken ear, the garishly painted rocks holding open the French doors. It hurt to see the sentimental softening of the corners of his eyes for someone he could no longer have.
She strode across the kitchen and waved her hand over the new stainless steel auto-opening trash. The sunflower made a satisfying tha-chunk as it hit the side and then the bottom of the plastic liner.