Jules was on my studio stairs at eight in the morning with two coffees and a folder I had never seen before.
Jules: Shoes. We are going to the bank.
Maris: I already have a bank account.
I had three accounts, if we counted the one I never used and the one my aunt opened for me when I was nineteen.
Jules: You have an account with Alistair's name on the statements. That is not the same thing.
Jules: Every dollar you earn goes somewhere he can look at. Doesn't your hand get tired?
I wanted to argue. My mouth opened around an excuse, and Jules just waited, because she has known me for nine years and knows how that ends.
Maris: He pays for things.
Jules: He pays for things so you feel like you owe him. Bank. Now.
The branch smelled of new carpet and other people's money. The teller asked the usual things. Address, date of birth, income.
Then she asked whether anyone else would have access to the account.
Maris: No. Just me.
I signed my name four times. It came out the way it always did, but it looked different on paper that belonged to me.
Saying no to that question felt like taking off a coat that had been too tight for three years.
The card came out of a machine and the teller set it down like it was nothing at all.
Jules: Read the name.
Maris: Just my name. Nobody else's.
Jules: Well? How does it feel?
I looked at the card in my hand and tried to find the big word for it.
Maris: Small. And mine.
Jules hugged me hard, then stepped back and pretended she had not, because Jules does not do scenes before ten in the morning.
Maris: You made me do this. Thank you.
Jules: I walked you to the counter. The pen was yours.
Jules: I believe you. All of it. The pearls, the drive, the message with her name at the top.
Maris: I stood there for three years and called it a relationship. I even defended it to you.
Jules: Then you stopped defending it. That is the part I am counting.
My phone buzzed against my palm while we waited for the light to change.
Rory: Your car is fixed. The keys are with the garage guard. He is expecting you until eight.
Maris: It's Rory. He had my car fixed.
Jules: Did he ask for anything?
I read it twice. There was no question in it, no favor being counted, nothing I had to hand back.
That was the confusing part. Kindness with no hook in it, and I kept running my thumb along the edge to find one.
Jules: You are smiling at your phone.
Maris: I am smiling at a message about a dead battery.
Jules: Right. That is exactly the face I make about batteries.
Jules: Steady is not the same as safe. You do not know which one his brother is yet.
Maris: I know. I am not trading one man's name on my account for another's.
Jules: Good. Get your own keys before you borrow anybody else's. And yes, I know how that sounds.
I laughed, and it surprised us both. It was the first time in days that my body had done anything without permission.
I found Alistair's name in my messages and my thumb hovered there out of pure habit. Tell him what I had done. Make it a fight.
I put the phone away instead. He could hear about my life when I decided he was worth telling.
At the studio I spread the papers out beside the painting I had been cleaning for a month. Two things in progress, and both of them mine.
The numbers were small. They were also the first numbers that had ever answered only to me.
Down the street, my keys were waiting with a guard who did not work for Alistair and did not want anything from me.
I still did not know what I wanted from Rory Kincaid. But I knew I would walk to that garage on my own feet, and that felt like enough for tonight.