THE SPACE BETWEEN US.

The Intruder

Laughter woke me before my alarm did. Bright, easy laughter, drifting up the stairs like it had every right to be in this house.

I lay there for a second, confused, half expecting to hear my mother's voice underneath it. Then I remembered, and the confusion turned into something sharper.

I pulled on a sweater and went down to find out whose laughter it was.

Corinne stood at the stove in my mother's apron, the pale blue one with the embroidered daisies that my mother wore every Sunday for as long as I could remember. Sienna sat at the table, in the chair at my mother's right hand, the one nobody touched, the one my father always left empty out of habit.

"Morning, sleepyhead," Corinne said, like this was normal. Like she hadn't just put a stranger in my mother's seat.

"That's her apron," I said.

Corinne glanced down at herself. "I found it in the laundry room. I hope you don't mind, it seemed a shame to let it go to waste."

"And that's her chair." I looked at Sienna. "You're sitting in her chair."

Sienna's fork paused halfway to her mouth. She looked at her mother, not at me, waiting for instructions.

"Mia," my father said, coming in from the hallway, tying his tie. "It's a chair."

"It's her chair, Dad."

"Your mother would want this family to keep functioning," Corinne said gently, far too gently, like she was talking someone down from a ledge. "She wouldn't want an empty seat at every meal."

"Don't tell me what she'd want. You don't get to do that."

"Mia." My father's voice cracked through the kitchen like a whip. "That's enough. Corinne has done nothing but try to help since she got here, and you've been nothing but hostile. I didn't raise you to treat guests like this."

"Guests don't wear dead women's aprons, Dad."

His jaw tightened. "Apologize."

I looked at him, really looked, searching for some trace of the father who used to carry me on his shoulders through the studio while my mother worked. I didn't find him.

"I'm going out," I said instead, and walked past all of them, past the coffee smell and the borrowed apron and the chair that wasn't Sienna's to sit in.

The drive to the studio usually calmed me. Not today. My hands stayed tight on the wheel the entire way, knuckles white, mind spinning through everything I couldn't say out loud without sounding insane.

I parked outside the little brick building with the hand painted sign my mother designed herself, silver letters on blue, "Eleanor Vance Designs." I reached for my key.

It didn't fit.

I tried again, jiggling it, telling myself it was just stuck, just old, just anything other than what it obviously was. The lock had been changed.

Taped to the door was a printed notice. I read it twice before the words made sense.

Ownership of this property and business has been legally transferred to Corinne Ashford, effective immediately.

I stood there staring at my mother's name still painted above a door I could no longer open.

My phone rang. Deb's name flashed on the screen, my mother's studio assistant for eleven years, the woman who taught me how to solder before I could drive.

"Deb?"

"Mia, thank god." Her voice shook. "Are you at the studio?"

"I'm standing outside it right now. The locks are changed. There's a notice, Deb, it says Corinne owns it."

"Mia, listen to me very carefully." Deb's voice dropped, urgent, frightened. "I found the transfer paperwork in your mother's files two nights ago. The signature date on it is from three days before she died."

My chest went cold. "That's impossible. Mom could barely hold a pen by then."

"I know," Deb said. "Mia, I don't think your mother signed those papers at all."