The deed would turn out to be my separate property.

I had furnished it, kept it, made it a home while he treated it as a place to bring my best friend when I traveled.

When I told him to leave, some part of me was already speaking from the truth the paperwork would later confirm: that between the two of us, the person with the deeper claim to that apartment was me, and always had been.

He heard a wife overstepping.

I was, without quite knowing it yet, an owner giving notice.

Chapter 6 — The Smile