The violence of that small replacement hit me much harder than I expected. People often think theft looks like a disappearance, but sometimes it looks like a cold substitution.
I walked farther into the living room and saw that the walls had been painted a colder gray. The slipcovered sofa that my mother loved had been replaced by a white sectional that no one would ever sit on with sandy legs.
The bookshelves still stood, but the cluttered paperbacks my mother read each summer were gone. In their place were decorative boxes and large objects that no one had ever touched.
“I told her not to paint over the cream color,” Cassandra muttered from behind me. I turned in surprise to see that she had followed us inside and pushed her sunglasses up into her hair.
“It made the whole place look much colder,” she added. It was the first honest thing I had heard her say all morning.
Victoria swept in after us and looked around with a critical eye. “As if your mother had such exquisite taste,” she sneered at me.
I stared at her and shook my head. “You really cannot help yourself even now, can you?” I asked.
“Do not start with me in this house,” she warned. I laughed once and looked at her with pity.