I moved into the studio on a Tuesday in September.
It was not a dramatic departure. I packed two suitcases and a box of books and my mother's green folder, and I carried it all down the path in three trips, and Daniel stood on the back steps and watched me and did not try to stop me.
"I'm not filing anything," I said. "Not yet."
"I know," he said.
"I need to know who I am without this house."
"I know," he said again.
He asked if I wanted him to come to the studio and I said no, not yet, and he nodded and went back inside.
The studio was six hundred square feet with a slanted roof and a window that stuck. It had no proper kitchen and a bathroom the size of a closet and a bed that was technically a sofa. But it had the desk and the window and the sun, and it was mine, and the deed to
