She renewed her driver's license on a Tuesday because the letter said she had thirty days and twenty-seven of them were already gone.
The woman behind the counter had her file up before Elise sat down.
"Confirm your address."
"1847 Birch."
"Still there?"
"Still there."
The address was right. She'd lived at 1847 Birch for eleven years. What the form didn't have a field for was that for the first six she'd lived there with someone and for the last five she'd lived there alone, and that these were not the same address.
"Emergency contact."
She gave her sister's name. Her sister lived in Tucson and they spoke once a month, the call lasting exactly as long as the update required and no longer. The form wanted a name and a number. It got both. What it couldn't hold was the particular silence on the other end when Elise said she was fine, a silence that knew she was lying and had decided, somewhere in year three, not to argue about it anymore.
"Any changes to report?"
Elise looked at the woman. There were changes. She slept on the left side of the bed now instead of the right, which she'd started doing without deciding to, the way a plant turns toward the window. She ate dinner at 5:30 instead of 7:00 because 7:00 had been a compromise and there was no one left to compromise with. She'd stopped buying the crackers that came in the green box because she'd never liked them and the reason she'd bought them had moved out and then further than that.
"No changes," Elise said.
The woman took her photo. Elise didn't smile. Not because she was unhappy, but because smiling for a camera felt like agreeing to something, and she was trying to stop agreeing to things she didn't mean. The photo would be hers for eight years. She'd carry it in her wallet and hand it to clerks and TSA agents and bartenders who didn't believe she was forty-six, and it would say: this is who she was on a Tuesday in July, twenty-seven days past due. Hair shorter than she used to keep it. Eyes that had learned something the form didn't ask about.
"Sign here."
She signed. Her signature had changed — she didn't cross the t the same way she used to, and she'd stopped dotting the i entirely, small capitulations she hadn't noticed until right now, watching her hand move across the line. The old signature had been practiced. This one was just hers.
The woman said the new card would arrive in two weeks.
Elise walked into the parking lot. The sun was overhead and blunt about it. Her car was where she'd left it. She unlocked it with the fob and sat in the driver's seat and didn't start it right away.
The old card was still in her wallet. She held it up and looked at the woman in the photo. Same name. Same address. Same face, give or take.
Different person entirely.
The form got everything right. That was the problem.