Chapter 3: Parking Lot Choices
The automatic doors closed behind us and the city hit us all at once. It was too bright outside for what I was wearing.
The sequins on my gown caught the sun and threw it everywhere. My girls squinted up at me. My older one had her hand tight in mine and my younger one had the pink bunny pressed against her chest, its ear dragging a little where she'd been holding it too tight since the elevator.
We stood on the sidewalk in front of the high-rise. People walked past in work clothes and looked, then looked away. A bus hissed at the curb. I could feel the heat coming up off the concrete through the thin soles of my shoes.
I didn't have a car waiting. He'd driven us there together that morning, because the attorney's office had been his idea.
My handbag hung from my fingers. I'd switched it to my left hand so I could hold my daughter's hand with my right. It was heavier than it looked. I felt the shift when I moved, like something solid sliding inside against the gold hardware.
My younger daughter tugged at my dress. "Mom, are we going home?" she asked. Her voice was small.
I knelt down. The beaded gown pooled on the sidewalk. I didn't care.
"Not that house," I said. "We're going to our place."
She nodded like she understood, though I knew she didn't. My older one just watched my face. She was old enough to hear what he'd said in that office and to know it meant something had changed about where we lived.
I stood and pulled my phone out of the handbag without opening the folders inside. The top handles clinked. I ordered a car to the apartment on Ellery, the one I'd signed for two weeks before the final papers were ready. It was a one-bedroom on the third floor above a dry cleaner. I'd paid the first month with money from my own account and hadn't told him. I hadn't told anyone except the leasing manager.
While we waited in the edge of the parking lot next to the building, I kept us in the shade of the overhang. My girls leaned against me. The wind moved through the parking lot and lifted the hem of my gown. I put one hand on my younger daughter's head and felt how warm her hair was from the sun.
"You cold, honey?" I asked, because she was shivering a little.
She shook her head. "No."
My older daughter looked at the garage entrance where his car was still parked. "Does dad have the keys?" she asked.
I looked down at her. Her eyes were the same color as mine.
"He has his set," I said. "We have ours."
I didn't say more. I didn't say the house on Ridgemont was already mine on paper, or that the keys he'd had copied last spring didn't matter anymore. She didn't need that weight yet. She just needed to know we had a door that would lock behind us.
The car pulled up, a gray Toyota with a dent on the passenger side. The driver got out and stared for a second at my dress, at the two little girls in light dresses, at the handbag I held like it might fall open.
"Ellery Street?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "Thank you."
He opened the back door for us. I helped the girls slide in first, then gathered the gown and sat beside them. The sequins scratched against the seat. My younger daughter set the bunny on her lap and buckled her seatbelt with both hands. My older one did hers herself and then reached over to help her sister pull the strap flat.
The driver didn't talk much on the way. The air conditioning blew hard and made the beading on my shoulders feel cold. Outside the window the downtown buildings gave way to the highway and then to the side streets with the laundromat and the elementary school and the gas station where I'd started buying milk.
I held the handbag on my knees the whole ride. Every time the car turned, I felt that weight move again. The folders inside were thick. I could feel the corner of one through the leather when I pressed my thumb down. I hadn't opened them in the office. I hadn't needed to. My attorney had slipped them to me when he'd been looking at his phone.
When we turned onto Ellery, my younger daughter sat up. "This is our apartment?" she asked.
"This is it," I said.
It wasn't much from the outside. Brick, three stories, fire escape on the side. A woman was pushing a stroller on the sidewalk and a couple of kids rode bikes in the lot. My girls pressed their faces to the window.
The driver parked by the front steps. I paid on the app and tipped and got out, then helped them out. My heels clicked on the cracked concrete. I carried the handbag and my younger daughter carried her bunny, and my older daughter held my hand again without me asking her to.
The hallway inside smelled like detergent from the cleaner downstairs. Our door was at the end, 3B. I unlocked it. The key was plain and silver, not like the heavy brass ones for the house.
Inside, it was quiet and cool. The furniture was what I'd been able to move a little at a time — a couch, a small kitchen table, the two twin beds I'd set up in the bedroom for them, my air mattress still folded against the wall. The curtains I'd hung last weekend were pulled half open and let in daylight.
I set the handbag down on the kitchen table. It landed with a soft, heavy thud. The gold handles settled with a clink.
My girls stood just inside the door, still holding hands.
"You can put bunny on the bed," I said softly. "We're home now."
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My younger daughter walked to the bedroom to do it, her steps light. My older one stayed and looked at the handbag, then at me, still in that white gown that didn't belong here.
I didn't open it. I left it there, exactly as it was, and went to find something normal for us to wear.
