Joy, for me, had always carried a second pulse beneath it. A question. Who will be angry about this? Who will say I did it wrong? Who will decide that what I earned belongs partly to someone else?
I closed my hand around the keys and told myself, No one has to know yet.
That decision felt dramatic only to people who had grown up with uncomplicated families. To me, it felt like wearing a seat belt.
I moved three weeks later on a Saturday morning, hiring a white-glove moving company that arrived precisely at 8:00 a.m. with padded blankets, wardrobe boxes, floor runners, and men who treated furniture like museum pieces. My old apartment in Lincoln Park looked tired in the morning light, smaller than I remembered, its beige walls scarred by the outlines of art I had already taken down. I had lived there six years. It had seen promotions, breakups, flu seasons, lonely birthdays, and the night I learned my father had told Bethany I was “good for it” when she needed two thousand dollars for a certification course she never completed.