I nearly threw the letter away.
“Tell her you’re my wife.”
Instead, an hour later, I was standing in the courthouse lobby.
Couples filled the plastic chairs.
A woman in a white jumpsuit fixed her lipstick while her fiancé held her bouquet. A toddler crawled beneath two chairs while his father tried to catch him.
I was standing in the courthouse.
Three weeks earlier, Larry and I had sat in that same row.
He’d rubbed his palms against his pants over and over.
“You’re shaking,” I’d told him.
“I’m dying. I’m allowed to shake.”
“You’re shaking.”
I’d accepted that explanation.
Now I wondered what else I’d accepted because it was easier than asking another question.
At the records counter, a clerk pointed me toward an older woman in red glasses.
“Margaret?”
She looked up.
“Yes?”
I’d accepted that explanation.
“I’m Sarah. Larry’s wife.”
