Rosalind stared at the envelope on the bare floor as though it might detonate. Julian arrived just as the last moving truck pulled away, his face pale, his mother’s frantic phone calls finally having reached him. He looked at the empty rooms, at his stunned mother, and at me standing calmly in my coat with my handbag on my shoulder. “Naomi, what is this?” he asked. I gestured toward the envelope with his name on it and told him, quietly, that everything he needed to understand was inside. Then I told them both the number one more time, so there could be no confusion. Eleven thousand five hundred dollars, every month, due in eleven days.

Julian tore open the envelope with shaking hands. Inside were four years of bank statements, the lease agreement listing me as the sole leaseholder, and a single typed page. The page was not angry. It simply stated the facts. As of the end of the month, I was terminating the lease that had always been in my name alone. The apartment they had thrown me out of had never belonged to Julian, to Rosalind, or to the “real family” they were so eager to install. It had belonged, financially and legally, to the woman they had just discarded.