The elevator smelled like lemon furniture polish and someone's leftover Thai food. I pressed the button for the sixth floor and smoothed the front of my maternity sweater.
What I was about to do had to be done. Victor kept saying "soon," but "soon" had stopped working for me two months ago. I was seven months pregnant. The baby needed a place. A proper place.
I stepped out into the hall. Apartment 6D. The door was painted a shade of white that had gone buttery yellow over the years. A dead spider plant hung in a cracked plastic pot by the stairwell.
I rang the bell.
The woman who opened it had dirt under her fingernails. She was wearing a cardigan with pockets she shoved her hands into when she saw me. Her hair was pulled back in a clip, gray strands loose around her ears.
"You're Sandra," I said.
She didn't answer.
"I'm Chelsea. Victor's future wife."
I said it the way I'd rehearsed in the car—bright, no hesitation. Like I was letting her in on something she should already know.
Something flickered in her eyes. Not anger. Something I didn't recognize.
"Can I come in? We need to have a civil conversation."
She looked past me at the neighbor's door. For a second I thought she'd slam the door in my face. Then she stepped back.
The apartment was warm. A little cluttered. The kind of place where everything had been picked out on purpose—the worn leather armchair, the books stacked on the coffee table, framed photos of two daughters at weddings.
I asked to wash my hands. She pointed down the hall.
When I came back out, she was at the kitchen sink, scrubbing her hands. I saw her fingers shaking under the running water. For a moment, I almost felt something. Then I reminded myself why I was there.
I sat down at the kitchen table. The chair creaked. I put my hand on my belly and looked around—oak cabinets, white tile backsplash, a cookie basket in the center of the table.
"I want to be straightforward with you," I said. "Victor and I are having a boy. He needs a place to live. My apartment is one bedroom. Victor told me you two have been here for thirty years. That your daughters are grown and gone. That there's a cottage near Hocking Hills."
She sat down across from me. Didn't say anything.
"I think we can do this like adults," I went on. "You move to the cottage. Fresh air, room to garden. Victor and I and the baby live here. The schools in this district are excellent."
Her hands were folded on the table. She just looked at me.
I was hungry—I'd skipped breakfast. I reached for a cookie from the basket. Oatmeal walnut. I took a bite.
Something hard. A piece of shell, maybe. I fished the half-chewed piece out of my mouth and dropped it onto the linen napkin by the sugar bowl. Then I wiped my fingers on the same napkin.
"Sorry," I said, not meaning it. "These cookies have bits in them."
Sandra looked at the napkin. Then she stood up.
She walked to the window and closed it. The freeway noise below disappeared.
Then she walked to the counter and picked up a blue three-ring binder. She came back and set it on the table between us.
"Chelsea," she said. Her voice was lower now. Different. "Did Victor happen to mention that this condo was never his?"
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
"He's not on the deed. This place was a gift from my mother. Before we married. He has no legal claim to it. He never did."
"That's not true," I said. A laugh came out of me, sharp and wrong. "He showed me receipts. He paid for the renovation."
"He paid for the renovation with money he borrowed from my older brother. Six years ago."
She said it so calmly. Like she was reading from a list.
"And here's the part he definitely didn't tell you." She tapped the binder. "Victor hasn't had a real job in eighteen months. His trucking company filed for Chapter 7 last spring. He owes collection agencies two hundred and forty thousand dollars. He's been living off my credit cards for the past year."
My hand slid off my belly.
"His credit cards," I said, but my voice didn't sound like mine.
"Paid by me. Every single one." She tilted her head. "The dinners, the flowers, the weekend trips to that little bed-and-breakfast in Amish country. All of it. On my Visa."
The kitchen seemed to tilt. I looked at the old butter cookie tin on the shelf above her head—the blue kind with the Danish castle on it. My grandmother had one just like it, full of thread and needles. I couldn't stop looking at it.
"You want to know the best part?" Sandra asked.
I didn't want to know anything. I wanted to leave. But I couldn't move.
"An hour ago, I put two large suitcases of Victor's things outside the door. Tonight, he'll come to you not with keys to a spacious condo, but with two hundred and forty thousand dollars of debt. He has nowhere to go except your one-bedroom apartment."
She opened the binder and turned it toward me.
"Court documents. From the creditors. I printed them yesterday."
I looked down. Stacks of paper. Numbers. Official letterhead.
A year. A whole year of believing him. The dinner reservations, the trips, the promise of a spring wedding. The apartment he showed me photos of—this apartment—and said it would be ours.
Sandra closed the binder.
"If you want to take it, take it. But I think you already know what's in it."
I stood up. My legs didn't feel like they belonged to me. I grabbed my bag off the floor and turned toward the door.
In the hallway, I saw them: two big black suitcases with gold zippers. Victor's. I recognized the luggage tags from a trip we'd taken to Chicago.
The elevator took forever. I just stood there, one hand on my stomach, not looking at anything.
Down in the car, I sat for a long time. The sky was the color of wet concrete. A neighbor's tabby cat watched me from the building's front steps.
I took out my phone. Victor's number was right at the top of recent calls.
I typed a message: "We need to talk."
I looked at it.
Then I deleted it, one letter at a time, and turned the phone off.
I put the phone in the glove compartment. I started the car. The heat came on, smelling like old coffee and asphalt.
I merged onto I-71 North and let the gray sky swallow me. I didn't call him. I didn't cry. Not yet.
I just kept both hands on the wheel and drove.
