The laundry.
The parking.
I added Brody to my household bank account so he could do the grocery runs without it being awkward.
I did not ask for rent.
I did not draw up a lease.
I told myself it was temporary.
What I hadn’t counted on was the pace at which Maxine’s sense of belonging would expand.
It started with the pantry.
The second week they were there, I came downstairs to find everything rearranged.
The canned goods had been sorted into a different order.
My spices moved to a lower shelf.
The things I reached for every morning pushed to the back.
When I mentioned it, Maxine said the previous layout wasn’t functional.
I let it go.
The month after that, she moved my reading chair out of the sunroom.
She did this without asking.
Without mentioning it beforehand.
I simply walked in one afternoon and the chair was gone, replaced by her standing desk and a ring light for her video calls.
She needed the south light for the camera, she explained when I asked.
I found my chair in the corner of the guest room.
I moved it to the kitchen and read at the table after that, which was less comfortable and much colder in the mornings.
By spring, she had claimed the dining room for remote calls and the sunroom as her office.
She had also taken to leaving her deliveries spread across the kitchen counter for hours at a time, apparently expecting them to put themselves away.
She rearranged the linen closet, discarding two sets of towels she found aesthetically unacceptable.
She once looked at the doormat in the front entry and suggested, with an instructive little tilt of her head, that visitors ought to leave their shoes there.
In my home.
Where I had worn slippers freely for 19 years.
Every time I brought any of it up with Brody, I received the same response.
“She’s stressed with work.”
“It’s just temporary.”
He would say this quietly, with the particular tone of someone who had worked out the exact combination of words most likely to end the conversation without requiring him to do anything.
I let it build because I loved him.
I kept waiting for Brody to find his footing.
I kept telling myself he eventually would.
He did not.
And so by October, Maxine had been allowed to believe that my silence was the same thing as permission.
The morning it came to a head, I was making porridge at the stove.
Maxine came downstairs already dressed for work, her schedule clearly full.
She set her mug on the island, opened her phone, and said without looking up that her mother and her sister Bianca were flying in from Halifax on Friday.
Three-week visit.
Her mother had a bad hip and needed the main-floor bedroom.
Her sister could take the other spare room.
And since that would be a bit crowded, wouldn’t it make sense for me to stay with my friend Roseanne for the duration?