Chapter 2 Eleven Hundred Dollars

The landlord wanted two months' rent by Friday, and my checking account had eleven hundred dollars in it.

I did the math three times on the back of a pharmacy receipt. First month, deposit, and the fee for the key. Then the electric bill, which had arrived at the house and been forwarded to me in a plain envelope. The total was a little over three thousand. The apartment was new, and I had nothing else lined up. The quarterly royalty had stopped the day I sent the notice on Monday. That was the whole point of it. I had known the money would stop. I had not done the math on what that meant for the next month.

The apartment was above a dry cleaner on Fenwick Street. It smelled of steam and starch, and the radiator knocked all night like someone wanted in. I had picked it because the rent was low and the window faced the street, so I could watch people walk to work without them seeing me. I had not expected to feel better about that than I did.

Chris called on Wednesday. I let it ring out and listened to the voicemail twice.

"Your things are still in the house," he said. He sounded like he was standing in a hallway, not sitting at his desk. "The boxes in the garage are yours. Come and get them whenever you want." A pause, long enough for me to hear a door close somewhere behind him. "Did you eat today?"

Then he hung up.

I put the phone face down on the counter and stood there with a sleeve of crackers in my hand. I had not told anyone about the money. I had not told Priya or my sister, or the lawyer, who would have told me to let him pay. I wanted to be angry about the question, and I was, a little. But mostly I kept thinking about how he'd said it, like it had come from somewhere he didn't usually go.

On Thursday, I went back to Harrow Lane while he was at the office. Priya had texted me the time he would be gone, the way she used to send me his schedule when we were still married, as if she thought I might need it. I didn't answer her. I used the spare key that was still on my ring.

The house was too clean. The staircase was dusted, the photographs were straight, and the kitchen counter was bare except for a bowl of lemons. Only the closet upstairs told the truth. My side was empty except for three hangers and the dress I had worn to the Kessler gala. The boxes were in the garage, labeled in my handwriting, and I counted them twice before I picked up the first one.

I should have taken the boxes and left.

Instead, I walked down the hall to the study. The door was open. The safe in the corner was open too, its heavy steel door swung out, and a single folder sat on the shelf inside. Nobody had locked it. Nobody had thought I would come.

The first page was a draft agreement. The header read Prenuptial Agreement, Draft 3, and under it was my name, typed correctly, with my middle initial. I turned the pages slowly, the way you'd walk on ice. Clause 9 was highlighted in yellow.

Spouse waives any and all claims to intellectual property, patents, designs, or royalties arising from work performed before or during the marriage, and agrees that all such property shall remain the sole asset of the Ethan family enterprise.

I read it twice. A draft, I told myself. Paper that somebody typed up and never finished. Then I read the date at the top of the page.

It was the week he proposed. I had been sitting at a café on Ashford Street, eating a croissant I didn't want, when he called to say he had a surprise. I remembered the ring box in his coat pocket, and how he had looked at me across the table, and how I had thought he was nervous.

Maybe he hadn't been nervous at all. Maybe he had already finished the draft, and the ring was the easy part.

I flipped to the last page. My signature line was blank. His was already signed, and beneath his name he had written something in small, neat capitals. I read it once and felt the floor shift under my feet.

SHE WILL NEVER READ THE FINE PRINT.

Outside, a car turned into the driveway. The engine cut off. A door opened, and then another.

I stood in the study with the folder open in my hands, and I heard his keys in the front door.