My mouth dropped, and I stepped backward again. The wall brushed my backside. Nowhere to go.
“Ironic, isn’t it,” she said, “that I spent almost two decades living off the grid, hiding from my ex in some shitty American town, only to come back and find that, apparently, he wasn’t looking for me at all?”
It seemed prudent not to correct her definition of irony, so I remained silent.
“I’ve got no money, no job, no friends left, no family, no real prospects for the future, but you’re living it up real nicely. Turns out, you’re better at being me than I was. But I think you’ve been me long enough. I hope you’ve got an extra bed, because I’m moving in.”
“What? You can’t!”
“Of course I can. It’s my house,” she said. “The name on the deed, Christa, is mine.”
My mind raced, but if she was rea
