Iris arrived with two coffees and a white envelope tucked under the cardboard carrier. She set mine beside the piano and kept hers in her hand. I had asked her to come early, before my afternoon pupils, and had arranged the chairs facing one another. She glanced at them and stayed standing.
"I've made a decision," she said. "I can't keep discussing full time as if saying no means I'm not serious about work. I'm serious about this work." She pulled the envelope free. "I drafted my notice. I haven't handed it in."
I looked at the envelope instead of her. There was no stamp, just a name on the front in the printing she used for lesson folders. She had taken care over it. I could see where a first attempt at one letter had been darkened and made neat.
"Don't give it to them," I said.
Her coffee stopped halfway to her mouth. "Why?"
"The painting can't be counted on. The adviser found a theft appeal with a picture that resembles it. She hasn't authenticated it, but she's referred the concern to someone who handles recovery questions. I agreed to that. There isn't a sale going ahead."
I had rehearsed a gentler order: paperwork first, resemblance second, no money last. Seeing the letter had taken the order away. Iris set the cup down carefully. Then she sat in one of the chairs I had put out, keeping the envelope across her knees.
"When did you find this out?"
"Friday. There was already a records concern on Wednesday."
"You texted me that they needed paperwork."
"They did. But I left out how serious it was."
She looked past me at the piano. I could not tell whether she was angry or calculating, and I had no right to choose the interpretation that frightened me less. "I've spent the weekend working out which lessons I could take," she said. "I asked about changing my hours. I told someone I might have a place."
"I never meant for you to resign before we had—"
"Don't finish that with a rule you didn't give me." Her voice stayed low. "You said you'd front the deposit and the first two months. Then you said there was a painting. I asked for a real number, and you kept giving me reasons to wait for one."
I opened my hands, an old habit from lessons when I wanted a child to loosen a grip. It looked foolish between us. "I thought I could find the papers and settle it before it mattered."
"It mattered when I started planning."
There was a car moving slowly outside, then the knock of something loose in its trunk as it crossed a dip. I listened until it had gone. I wanted more time before answering, though time was what I had already taken from her.
"You're right," I said. "I knew there was uncertainty you didn't know about. I should have told you before you made plans."
She slid the letter back into the envelope but didn't seal it. "I'll keep the job. I'll tell them I'm not taking full time yet, if that choice is still there. That's my conversation to have. I don't want you calling anyone or offering to make up the difference."
"I could help with—"
"No." She put the envelope in her bag. "You can tell me what you actually have. You can't keep making my career into the thing that will prove your work was worth it."
I felt the sting of that because I had never used those words. I had only pictured the two names on a door, her staying after lessons to share supper, my years in borrowed rooms becoming a beginning instead of a long detour. None of it had required her permission while I kept it in my head.
"I wanted us to have something together," I said.
"So did I. That doesn't mean you get to decide what I can risk." She stood, taking the untouched coffee. "I'm not saying we'll never teach together. I'm saying stop promising me a room."
After she left, I moved the chairs back against the wall. My next pupil would need space for his father to sit. I checked the clock, then opened my calendar and crossed out the studio deposit reminder. The square underneath was still visible, clean enough to write something true in, but I left it empty.