The keys from the garage guard were still in my pocket when Clarissa appeared in my studio doorway.
She wore a red coat and a smile that had already decided how the morning would go.
Clarissa: I thought I'd find you here. Alistair says you sleep above the shop now.
She walked in without being asked, and her heels clicked over the boards like she was inspecting the place for termites.
Clarissa: Don't look so tragic. I came to do you a kindness.
I put my brush down and wiped my hands, because my hands wanted something to do.
Maris: Say it and go.
Clarissa: He isn't coming back to you. He was never really with you to begin with.
Clarissa: You were a temporary distraction. A warm spot in his bed until the foundation voted.
Maris: Three years.
Clarissa: He was busy. You were convenient. Don't dress it up.
Clarissa: Do you want to know what he says about you after? He says you lie there like furniture and wait for him to finish.
My ears went hot, and shame did what it always does to me. It went quiet instead of loud.
At the top of the stairs, a courier stood with a crate of frames and nowhere to put his eyes.
He heard all of it. That was the part that would burn later.
Clarissa: Everyone in that family knows what you are. A caretaker they hired for the vote, and a warm body in between.
Clarissa: I'm the only one who says it to your face. You should thank me.
My voice came out lower than I wanted it to. That happens when I am trying not to shake.
Maris: Get out of my studio.
Clarissa: Or what? You'll call Eleanor? She sent me, sweetheart. She thought you needed to hear it plainly.
Then a shadow filled the door, and I knew the shape of those shoulders before I saw the face.
Clarissa: Rory. Did you come to watch her cry too?
Rory: I came for the foundation pickup. Now I'm asking you to leave.
Clarissa: We were having a conversation.
Rory: No. You were talking at her. Everyone on this staircase can tell the difference.
His voice was flat and quiet, the way a door closes in a house where someone is already asleep.
Rory: The stairwell is empty. Go down it.
Clarissa: She'll be gone by September. You're just standing in a doorway for nothing.
Rory: Then let her go in September. Right now, go down the stairs.
She picked up her coat like it had never been off, smiled at the courier, and went down without hurrying at all.
Her perfume stayed in the room longer than she did.
The courier set the crate down, mumbled something about a signature, and did not look at me at all.
My hands shook so hard that the pen skipped across the paper.
I texted Jules three words. Clarissa was here. She answered before I put the phone down.
Jules: Do not let her back in that studio. Say the word and I will leave work.
I typed back that I was still standing, and she said that sounded like me.
Rory: I can come back for the gilded panel another day. You don't have to do this now.
Maris: It's dry. It's ready.
I wanted one thing this morning to go the way I said it would.
He held the panel while I wrapped it, and he did not say one word about Clarissa.
He also did not look at me like I was something that had just been handled badly.
Up close, his gray eyes had a ring of brown at the edge. I noticed that and then wished I hadn't.
Maris: Thank you. For the stairs. For not asking me to explain it.
Rory: I wasn't going to make you tell it twice in one day.
He carried the panel down himself and said the foundation van was double parked, and that was all.
Below me, the bakery started their ovens, and the street filled up with people who had no opinion about the Kincaids.
The morning had been ugly, and I was still standing in it. For once that felt like enough.