29.
Three weeks later, I discovered that returning to law school was significantly easier in theory than it was while sitting in the middle of Professor Bennett's lecture.
I'd spent the better part of the last week telling myself I was ready.
I'd caught up on enough of the assigned reading that the cases on the syllabus no longer looked completely foreign, answered the emails I'd been avoiding and organized the notes classmates had been kind enough to send me into folders that made the amount of material I'd missed look marginally less
terrifying.
This morning, I'd gotten dressed before I could give myself enough time to reconsider, packed my bag and driven to Georgetown with the determination of someone who had finally decided that three weeks away was already three weeks too many.
Now I was sitting several rows from the front with my laptop open to a document containing exactly four useful sentences.
Professor Bennett's voice carried easily through the classroom as she moved through the day's lecture, occasionally stopping beside her desk to reference something on the screen behind her. Around me, keyboards clicked steadily. Pages turned.
I looked back at my screen.
My cursor blinked patiently after the last sentence I'd typed nearly five minutes ago.
I forced myself to listen again.
I glanced discreetly toward the woman sitting beside me. Her eyes remained fixed on Professor Bennett while her fingers moved across her keyboard with the confidence of someone whose brain hadn't abandoned the classroom twenty minutes ago.
Mine had apparently left Georgetown altogether.
I tried again, resting my hands over the keyboard and following Bennett's explanation until another thought slipped between her words.
Storage.
My clothes had finally made it out of the White House.
Getting them had been considerably easier than I'd expected, which probably should've made me suspicious.
I'd called Vivian after spending nearly an hour drafting and deleting different versions of what should've been a simple request, eventually settling on telling her that I wanted all of my personal belongings removed from the residential quarters and delivered to a storage facility.
Clothes. Shoes. Jewelry. Books. Anything that belonged specifically to me.
Vivian hadn't interrogated me. She hadn't told me she needed to speak with Rodney first or asked whether I understood how it might look for the First Lady to quietly empty her things out of the White House.
She'd simply asked me to send the storage information and a list of anything I wanted handled separately.
Two days later, everything was there.
I'd stood inside the storage unit staring at garment bags, boxes and neatly labeled containers for several minutes because I'd prepared myself for a fight that never happened.
Even my jewelry had been inventoried and packed carefully.
Nothing appeared to be missing. Rodney hadn't called.
He hadn't texted. He hadn't sent Vivian back with some message reminding me that I couldn't simply remove myself from his life.
For approximately twenty-four hours, I'd allowed myself to believe that maybe he had finally decided silence was easier.
Then I'd tried to buy coffee and my card declined.
I'd assumed the machine was broken until my phone began filling with notifications.
One card after another had been deactivated.
The credit card I'd carried for years. The secondary account attached to household expenses.
Even the card I rarely used but kept tucked behind my driver's license for emergencies.
Rodney hadn't called because he didn't need to.
He'd cut me off.
Professor Bennett asked the class a question, and several hands went up around me.
I lowered my eyes before she could accidentally interpret my face as enthusiasm.
The frustrating part was that I should've anticipated it. Rodney had spent years reminding me that everything I had existed because of him.
Apparently he'd decided to start collecting.
When I told Grant his response had been considerably less dramatic. I'd mentioned the cards over dinner, and he'd disappeared upstairs before returning with a credit card.
No speech.
No conditions.
He'd slid it across the table and told me to use it for whatever I needed.
I'd stared at it long enough that he'd eventually added that I didn't have to ask him before buying anything and he wasn't going to monitor what I spent. Somehow that had made accepting it harder rather than easier.
Grant had spent money on me before. He bought groceries I ate, filled my gas tank without asking, ordered things I'd mentioned needing and occasionally appeared with gifts simply because something had reminded him of me. None of that had ever bothered me.
Depending on his card because mine no longer worked was different.
I trusted Grant.
That was almost what made the discomfort difficult to explain.
I didn't believe he would wake up angry one morning and cancel the card to remind me who controlled the money. I didn't believe he'd examine every purchase or make me justify what I needed. If anything, I could probably spend an obscene amount before he bothered asking what I'd bought.
But that wasn't the point.
If Grant disappeared from my life tomorrow, what exactly belonged to me?
The question had been sitting uncomfortably in my head ever since he handed me that card.
For years, the answer would've been complicated by marriage.
Rodney's money had been our money until he decided it wasn't.
The White House had been my home until entering it became dangerous.
My schedule belonged to Vivian. My public identity belonged to an administration.
Even the things I'd finally managed to remove from the White House were now stacked inside a rented concrete box because I didn't have a permanent place of my own to put them.
I loved being at Grant's house.
I enjoyed being around him enough that acknowledging that thought still made something flutter uncomfortably in my chest.
I also never wanted being with someone to be the reason I couldn't afford to leave them.
That realization had been following me all morning.
Professor Bennett turned back toward the board.
I glanced at the time in the corner of my laptop and then, with the shame of someone fully aware she was doing something she shouldn't, opened another browser tab.
Georgetown law student part time jobs
I typed quickly and immediately lowered the brightness of my screen, as though the woman beside me had been paying attention to my screen.
Most of the results were exactly what I expected. Research assistant positions, dining hall jobs, and tutoring.
I scrolled farther.
A Georgetown page caught my attention.
Student Part-Time Job Fair at 4pm.
I stopped scrolling.
Today?
I clicked.
The fair was being held on campus less than ten minutes from the building I was sitting in. Local nonprofits, campus departments and community organizations would be there. Students were encouraged to bring résumés, but digital copies were accepted.
For the first time all morning, my attention settled completely on one thing.
I pulled out my phone beneath the desk.
Grant answered quickly enough that I wondered whether he was between appointments.
I rolled my eyes at the screen.
Of course he knew that.
I started typing.
I know, but—
My fingers stopped.
I deleted it.
There were a dozen explanations I could've given him. I could tell him I wouldn't take many hours. I could promise that I'd quit if my grades suffered.
But all of those answers felt like I was asking permission.
I wasn't.
The typing bubble appeared almost immediately.
Then disappeared.
It came back.
Disappeared again.
I waited.
I stared at his message for several seconds.
That could've annoyed me.
A few months ago, it probably would've. We'll talk about it at home sounded dangerously close to something Rodney would've said when he thought I'd made a decision above my station.
But I knew Grant well enough now to recognize the difference.
Grant would tell me what he thought.
He wouldn't tell me what I was allowed to do.
I locked my phone and returned it to my bag before looking toward the front of the classroom again.
Professor Bennett had moved on.
I had absolutely no idea what was happening.
I opened the shared class notes beside my own and began the humiliating process of figuring it out.
By four o'clock, my first day back had left me with a headache, six pages of notes of wildly inconsistent quality and the uncomfortable realization that catching up at home was very different from keeping pace inside an actual classroom.
Still, I'd made it through the day.
That mattered more than I wanted to admit.
The job fair was already busy when I arrived.
Students moved between rows of tables arranged throughout the large multipurpose room, most carrying folders or phones with résumés pulled up on their screens.
Some of the organizations had elaborate displays with standing banners and bowls of candy; others had apparently arrived with a tablecloth, a stack of pamphlets and confidence.
I slowed near the entrance.
For the first time since deciding to come, I felt slightly ridiculous.
I was the First Lady of the United States at a student job fair.
There were probably easier ways to make money.
There were certainly less conspicuous ones.
A few people had already noticed me. I caught the familiar double take from a student walking past, followed by the quick glance toward her friend that usually meant my presence was about to become somebody's text message.
I adjusted the strap of my bag and kept walking.
I looked at a university administrative position, stopped briefly at a tutoring organization and accepted information from a legal-services nonprofit that wanted student volunteers but wasn't currently hiring. None of them felt wrong exactly. They simply didn't make me stop.
The table near the end of the next row did.