Claimed

Something about the stone was off. Aria knows it before she picks it up, something in the way the light moves through it, too clean, too cooperative, like a stone that has decided to be beautiful rather than simply being it. She sets it aside without ceremony and picks up the next one. A raw citrine, uncut, the colour of late afternoon in a room where someone has left a candle burning. She holds it up to the lamp and mumbles. Now. This is the one she’ll keep. The workshop smells of metal and beeswax and the particular sawdust-sweetness of raw wood from the organiser she has been meaning to refinish for two years. Glancing at the time on her watch she realized it was few minutes past nine in the morning. She has been at the bench since six-thirty, which means she beat Nadia by forty minutes and Nadia has already stopped being impressed by this. "The Marcello consultation is in twenty minutes," Nadia says from the doorway, not looking up from her tablet, probably going over her schedule again. She has the particular skill of delivering information and criticism in the same breath. "You're still in your work apron." "I'll change." "You said that at eight-forty." "I'll change faster this time." Behind her, from the corner of the workshop that has been unofficially designated Ren's territory since the day he learned to walk, there is the focused silence of a child doing something he has been told not to do. Aria does not turn around. She has learned that turning around confirms suspicion and suspicion invites negotiation, and she does not have time for a negotiation this morning. "Ren," she says, still looking at the citrine. "What are you drawing on?" A pause. The specific pause of a four-year-old calculating odds. "Paper," he says. "Which paper?" Another pause. Shorter this time — he has correctly identified that the longer pause did not help him. "The white paper." "The white paper from the printer, or the white paper from my reference shelf?" Silence. Aria puts the citrine down, strips one glove, and turns around. Her son is sitting cross-legged on the floor with the focused expression he gets when he is doing something he considers important, a fat marker in one hand and what she can see, with the particular resignation of a mother, is the back of a client mockup sheet. A client mockup sheet she spent forty minutes on yesterday. He has drawn what appears to be a person, tall with limbs that looked like sticks, a serious rectangular face with no mouth. "Ren." "I needed good paper," he said, with the complete reasoning of someone who has assessed the situation and found his conclusion logical. "The printer paper goes wobbly." Nadia makes a sound from the doorway that is technically a cough. Aria crosses the workshop, crouches to Ren's level, and looks at the drawing. The figure is tall. Very tall. The face has two dots for eyes and no other features, which gives it a particular quality, not blank, she thinks, but waiting. Like someone who has decided to withhold expression until they know whether it's deserved. She has seen that expression somewhere. She cannot place it this morning. "Who is that?" she asks. Ren considers the drawing with his head tilted. "A person," he says. Then, with the air of someone adding useful clarification: "A serious person." "Give me the marker." He gives her the marker. She tucks it into her apron pocket and straightens up, taking the mockup sheet with her. She will redraw it tonight. It has happened before. She does not examine why she folds it carefully rather than crumpling it. "Aria." Nadia again, from the doorway. "Seventeen minutes." "I heard you for the first time." "You say that like it means you're moving." Aria unties her apron and hangs it on the hook by the bench. Underneath she wore what she always wears to client consultations, something simple, something that says I made this rather than I am trying to impress you. She learnt that the clients who need impressing are never the ones worth keeping. Vale Atelier is not a large space. That is intentional. Her mother built it small and specific, a room above a street that smells like bread in the mornings and petrol in the evenings, with north-facing skylights that give clean white light for six hours of the day. Aria has never moved it. She never wanted to. What she did was to fill every wall with what the company is — photographs of finished pieces, sketches pinned in rows, a shadow box of raw stones she is particularly fond of. Clients come in and look at the walls and understand something about Vale Atelier that no brochure has ever managed to say. That it is not decorative. That it is real in the way that things made by hand are real, with weight, with decision, with the evidence of a mind that cares enough to choose. This is what her mother built. This is what she has been fighting to keep. She does not think about the legal notice sitting in her email inbox this morning. She has read it twice and she will deal with it later, the same way she deals with all of Diana's moves, methodically, after Ren is asleep, when she can think without the static of trying to protect him from the knowledge that the woman who is supposed to be his grandmother wants his mother to fail. Later. Right now she has consultation to get to. Nadia is already on the phone when Aria comes through to the front studio, doing what Nadia does — managing four things simultaneously with the unruffled competence of someone who runs on lists and premium coffee. She gives Aria a once-over as she passes, makes a small gesture toward the mirror, and returns to her call. Aria glances at herself. Hair, fine. Earrings her own, a pair she designed six months ago from raw amber and oxidised silver, nothing showy. She adjusts the collar of her shirt and decides she is ready. She is always ready. This is the one thing Diana has never managed to take from her, her ability to walk into a room and be present in it. Her mother taught her that. You don't need to fill the room, Aria. You just need to be in it fully, her mom would say why caressing her head. She is thinking about this, about her mother, about the stones on the bench, about whether the citrine will work for the Marcello commission or whether she needs to go back to the supplier, she hears the front door open. Not the client. The Marcello appointment is not for another eleven minutes. She hears it before she sees it: the particular quality of a door being opened by someone who considers themselves entitled to what is on the other side. Not rude. Nothing Diana does is rude. Diana opens doors the way she does everything else — with a smile that sits in exactly the right position on her face and a scent that never fails to amuse her. Diana sure had weird taste. Diana Vale steps into Vale Atelier in a cream blazer and heels that cost more than Aria's monthly supplier invoice. She is carrying a leather document sleeve. She is smiling. "Aria, darling." She says it warmly. She has always said everything warmly. It took Aria years to understand that warmth is a register, not a feeling. "I hope I'm not interrupting." "You are," Aria says. "I have a client in ten minutes." "This won't take long." Diana sets the document sleeve on the nearest surface, Aria's surface, Aria's studio — with the easy confidence of a woman who has decided a space is hers long before anyone agrees. "My solicitor filed the formal benchmark review this morning. I wanted you to hear it from me first." The review. The acceleration of the codicil clause. The thing Aria read in her inbox at six forty-seven this morning and decided to deal with later. Later has arrived. She looks at Diana. Diana looks back, the smile in perfect position, and Aria has the sudden clear thought that her mother would have seen through this woman in four minutes and never let her through the door. "Thank you for telling me," Aria says. Her voice levelled. It costs her nothing to make it level. She has had four years of practiced patience. "Of course." Diana picks up the sleeve. "You have the right solicitor, I hope? These things can move quickly." "I have everything I need." Diana's smile does not flicker. It never does. She moves toward the door with the same unhurried certainty with which she arrived, and at the threshold she pauses, the pause of a woman who has rehearsed this moment. "Your mother would have wanted this handled cleanly," she says. "I'm sure of it." She leaves. Aria stands in the studio for three seconds. Then she goes to the bench, picks up the citrine she set aside this morning, and holds it up to the light. It is still the right stone. She puts it in her pocket and goes to meet her client.