The house felt different with Meg’s things gone.
Anna stood in the living room of Sam’s house — her mother’s house, Meg’s house all summer, and now, officially,herhouse — watching Bea haul boxes in from the car. Not the temporary boxes they’d been living out of all summer. Therealboxes. The ones from storage. Her good brushes, her easels, the art supplies she’d kept packed away because there hadn’t been room while three people shared this space.
“Careful with the blue one,” Anna called. “That’s my good brushes.”
“All your brushes are ‘good brushes.’”
“Some are gooder than others.”
“That’s not a word.”
“It’s an art word. You should understand.”
Bea made a face but handled the blue box with exaggerated gentleness.
Anna turned back to the room. Without Meg’s organizational systems colonizing every surface, the space felt larger. Emptier. Full of possibility.
The smell was different too. Since they’d been there, it had been coffee and printer ink and whatever candle Meg burned to mask the stress. Now it was just old wood, sea salt, and something underneath—something that might have been turpentine, or the ghost of her mother’s presence.
“You okay?” Bea appeared at her shoulder.
“Yeah. Just... adjusting.”
Meg had taken the last of her things to Luke’s this morning, and for the first time since they’d arrived from Florence, the house felt like it could breathe.
Not in a bad way. Not that it hadn’t breathed before, but just that it now had a purpose, rather than—waiting.
Anna walked through the rooms slowly, trailing her fingers along walls, doorframes, the edge of the kitchen counter. This had been Sam’s studio, once. The house they’d grown up in. Before Margo bought it secretly and kept it waiting for a daughter who never came home.
She stood in the center of the space, turning slowly, taking it in. The walls that had held Sam’s canvases. The floors that had been splattered with paint, then sanded clean, then splattered again. The window seatwhere, according to Margo, Sam used to sit for hours watching the water.
“You’d hate this,” Anna said to the empty room. “Me, living here. Organizing things. Making it a proper home instead of a creative crazy zone.”
The house didn’t answer. Houses never did.
“But you’re not here,” Anna continued. “You haven’t been here in years. And someone should be.”
She heard Bea moving around in the back room, the thump of boxes being set down, the creak of closet doors opening. Normal sounds. Living sounds.
Anna walked to the window seat and sat down. The ocean stretched out before her, endless and blue, the same view Sam had gazed at all those years ago. The same view Meg had gazed at for months. The same view that would now be Anna’s.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Meg.
How’s the move going? Need help?
Anna typed back.
Almost done. Bea’s claimed the ocean room. I’m having feelings in the living room.
Good feelings or bad feelings?
Complicated feelings. The usual.
Want company?
Anna considered.
Sure. Bring wine.
