The house feels wrong without her.
Not empty.
Not hollow.
Just rearranged.
The studio downstairs still smells like paint and turpentine. Her brushes sit in a jar by the window. A half-used tube of ultramarine is still squeezed flat in the middle.
She said she’d come back for it.
“It’s only been two days,” Marcus says gently when he finds me standing in the doorway of the studio again.
“I know.”
“She’s fine.”
“I know.”
He comes up behind me.
“She texted me this morning.”
“What did she say?”
“‘The dorm food sucks but the critiques are brutal in a good way.’”
I smile faintly.
“That sounds like her.”
“She’ll adjust.”
“I know.”
Silence.
The adjustment isn’t just hers.
It’s ours too.
For the first time since we adopted her, the penthouse doesn’t revolve around a teenager’s s
