Chapter 3: Nothing In My Name

"Who called them?" Linda whispered, her fingers frozen on the deadbolt.

Nobody answered, because the question was really meant for me, and I honestly didn't know either. The voice outside spoke again, calm and firm, saying they had received a report of a disturbance and needed the door opened. Steve recovered first. He straightened his shirt, ran a hand through his hair, and gave his mother a tiny nod, and by the time she turned the key his face had gone from furious to pleasant, the same smooth face I had watched charm his clients for years.

"Officers, thank you for coming," he said warmly. "It's only a family misunderstanding. My wife has been under a lot of stress lately."

Two officers stood on the step, and behind them, in her gardening cardigan, was Mrs. Dolan from next door. She was a retired schoolteacher in her sixties who had brought me soup the week my parents died, and she was one of the only people who still asked how I was. Her eyes went straight to my cheek, and her mouth tightened.

"I heard shouting, and then something smashed," she said quietly. "I'm sorry, dear, I couldn't just stand there."

"Thank you," I whispered, and I had to swallow before I could say more, because no one in this house had ever stood up for me.

The older officer, whose badge read Reyes, looked at my face for a long moment. He had tired, kind eyes, and he didn't look at Steve at all. "Ma'am, how did you get that mark?"

My heart was pounding so hard I thought they could all hear it. For eight years, in my last life, I had answered a question like this with silence, and I had died without ever learning what would have happened if I hadn't.

"My husband hit me," I said. "About half an hour ago, in the kitchen. His mother locked the front door so I couldn't leave. I have a video."

"Jenna," Steve said through his teeth. "Don't do this."

I knelt on the entry rug, unzipped the suitcase, and pulled out my laptop with hands that weren't quite steady. Officer Reyes watched over my shoulder as I opened my email and pressed play. The little speakers filled the hallway with Linda's screeching, then Steve's voice saying "She's not going anywhere," and then the unmistakable crack of a palm against skin. Max's small voice crying in the background was the hardest part to hear, and I kept my eyes on the screen so nobody would see mine.

When it ended, nobody spoke. The younger officer had gone very still, and Linda had turned the color of paper.

"Sir," Reyes said at last, "I'm going to ask you to step back from your wife."

"This is my house," Steve said.

"And she's free to walk out of it. Ma'am, would you like to make a report?"

"Yes," I said. "I would."

"Jenna, think about what you're doing." Steve's voice dropped to a hiss, pleading now underneath the anger. "My job. My name. Do you want to ruin everything we've built?"

"We didn't build anything," I said. "I built it, and you took it."

Reyes took my statement right there at the kitchen table, writing down the details while Linda glared from the doorway and Jessica pretended to be invisible. When he finished, he gave me a card with a report number on the back and told Steve, in a very level voice, that if I had to call again, the next visit wouldn't be so friendly. Linda unlocked the door without being asked.

I walked out with the suitcase in one hand and the wooden box under my other arm. At the bottom of the steps I looked back, and I saw Max at the living room window with his small hand pressed flat against the glass. He wasn't waving, only watching me go, and the look on his face was one I knew too well. It was the same look he'd worn over Steve's shoulder when the hatch slid shut, except this time I was the one who was leaving.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, though he couldn't hear me. "I'll fix it, I promise."

Mrs. Dolan squeezed my arm before I got into the taxi. "You call me if you need anything, you hear?" she said. "Anything at all."

"I will," I said, and for the first time that day I almost cried.

The hotel was a mid-range place near the train station, bright and quiet, and I stood at the front desk with my suitcase and counted in my head how long I could afford to stay. The clerk typed for a moment, then smiled at me with polite regret. "I'm sorry, ma'am, the card was declined. Would you like to try another?"

I handed her the second one and watched her face change. "This one has been cancelled by the primary account holder," she said gently.

My stomach dropped. Steve had moved in less than an hour, and I stood there with forty-one dollars in cash in my wallet and a room that cost a hundred and twenty. My hands went cold, because he had been right about one thing. Every account was in his name, and he had just proved that he could lock me out of all of them.

"Is there a problem?" asked a voice behind me, light and pleasant, with a smile in it.

I turned around, and my blood went cold for a different reason. Vanessa stood in the lobby in a cream coat, her hair perfectly smooth, holding her car keys loosely in one hand. She was Steve's colleague, the woman he had always called just a friend, and the same woman I had watched him pull through the hatch. Seeing her alive and glowing made my skin crawl.

"Vanessa," I said evenly. "What are you doing here?"

"Steve asked me to bring you home." She said it kindly, as if she were doing me a favor. "He's very worried about you. And Max keeps asking where you went. He cried for almost an hour."

That hit exactly where she meant it to, and she knew it. I forced my voice to stay level. "Steve sent his girlfriend to bring his wife home."

"Girlfriend is such an ugly word." She slid an envelope out of her bag and held it out to me. "If you sign this, your cards will work again tonight. It says you're withdrawing the police report and dropping the divorce. It's very simple, Jenna, and then everyone can go back to normal."

"No," I said.

"Then you'll be sleeping in a train station," she said, still smiling, "and Max will keep wondering why you left him." Her eyes dropped to the wooden box under my arm. "Steve told me that's all you have left. May I?"

"Don't touch that."

She moved faster than I expected. Her hand closed on the box and yanked, and my fingers, numb from a long day, slipped. I lunged for it, but she was already walking backward toward the revolving doors, holding it against her coat, and the last thing she said before she pushed through them was clear and bright across the lobby.

"Let's see what Steve's lawyer thinks of your inheritance."

I ran after her, dragging my suitcase, and I burst through the glass just in time to see her cross the street to a gray car at the curb. Steve was standing beside it, and he reached out and took my grandfather's box from her hands like a man collecting a prize.