“Why is this here?” I asked, incredulous. “This is—this is a dream.” I wandered around the room, dragging my fingers over the empty shelves and racks that lined the walls, around the filigreed surface of the woodstove and the circle of its shiny steel chimney. Lightning flashed above the clear plastic roof, exposing the space like a photograph.

“Do you like it?” he called.

“I love it,” I said quietly, and it was easy to see exactly how to be here—to see myself working, to see my future. There was even a pegboard of paintbrushes—though, mostly narrow and ultra-fine, they were, to me, more decorative than useful.

“This was Carey’s studio,” he said slowly. “But it didn’t get a lot of use, not after…” He trailed off, his face changing, going slack, then certain. “We want you to use it, for as long as you want.”

“Why did she stop using this space?” I couldn’t believe it. She’d made it so far that she, as Tyler said, built her own universe.

If I ever reached this level of success, I’d never stop—never.

His spine rose up, feet planted squarely on the ground, eyes boring into mine. “Does it matter? There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a great space. It’s pristine.” Tyler didn’t want me to ask about Carey; he simply wanted me to accept.

“Thank you.” I continued walking around the room, feeling the space, looking at everything from the drains in the floor to the size of the sinks. The paintbrushes, which had sable tips, were shaped for the fine detail work required of her practice. CML was scratched into the thumb pads of their flattened wood handles.

As I wandered, Tyler stood against the wall, looking at the floor. He didn’t notice me watching him. I saw him look at the cracks in the concrete and trace one with his foot, like it was his, like he owned it; I saw him touch the wall with his hand, run his fingers over the light switches, like he was trying to memorize them. His eyes trailed around the room, memory after memory clouding his face, and I wondered how often he’d been in here since she died. I couldn’t imagine giving up my partner’s studio—erasing them from the world so completely—but I tried to remember that it was already mostly empty, and Carey herself had emptied it. Carey wasn’t on the map anymore. There were no photos of her anywhere. All of her things were gone. Pine City had already taken her away, for their own reasons, on their own timeline.

“Are you…” I ventured, and he snapped back to me, to our existence. “Are you, um, okay with it?”