"Yes. The card's coming in the mail. It takes a few weeks."
"I know how it works." He was still looking at the paper. "There's no picture on this."
"They don't put pictures on the temporary ones."
"I know they don't. That's kind of my problem, Ms. Garvey." He folded it once along its crease, not unkindly, and held it up between two fingers. "This is a piece of paper with a name on it. It could belong to anybody. I could walk into the BMV tomorrow and come out with one of these. You could have found this on the sidewalk."
"It's mine."
"I'm not saying it isn't. I'm saying it doesn't tell me anything." He looked at her. "You have anything with a photo on it? Work ID, passport, anything?"
She thought about the badge for Tri-County, which had her photo on it, and which was hanging on a hook in her locker at the plant because they were not supposed to wear them off the floor. She thought about her passport, which she did not have; she had never had one. Colt had not believed in passports. What do you need to go to another country for, he'd said, when you've got everything you need right here. She thought about the old card riding in the back of her wallet like a stone.
She could say no. It would be easy to say no. She had no other ID. He would believe her, or he would not, and either way the old card would stay where it was.
But she had made a promise to herself in a motel bathroom in Mansfield, standing over the sink with the sewing scissors and a long blonde braid in her other hand, watching the hair go down the drain in sections, and the promise was that she would not lie to protect herself anymore, because she had spent eleven years lying to protect herself and look where it had gotten her. She would keep secrets. That was different. Secrets she was allowed, the advocate at the shelter had told her; secrets were a safety plan. But she would not lie. And lying to a police officer, besides, was a crime, and she did not intend to give anybody, ever, an easy reason.
"I have my old license," she said. "It's been cancelled. They punched it."