Accidentally Pregnant with the Horror Boss novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: Friday

The Franklin County courthouse marries people on Fridays from nine to noon.

We got the ten-fifteen.

I wore a cream wool dress from the thrift store on High Street, with long sleeves and a skirt that stopped at my knees.

It was a little tight over the bump. I didn't care.

Ambrose wore the black three-piece suit and the red silk tie.

"You could wear something new," I'd said the night before. "We could go to a store. They have stores now."

"I was married in this suit once already," he said. "I'd like to do it again with you awake."

His mother was waiting on the courthouse steps when we got there.

She'd driven three hours from Pittsburgh in the dark. She was wearing a church coat and a hat with a pin in it.

She saw him get out of Penny's car and stood up very slowly.

He went up the steps to her two at a time.

Then he stopped one step below her, so they were the same height.

She put both hands on his face.

She held it like she'd held it when he was small. Her thumbs on his cheekbones.

Then her hands slid down to his jaw, and his neck, and his collar.

He flinched.

I saw it. Eleven years of habit, a whole body bracing.

His head stayed exactly where it was.

His mother didn't notice anything. She just pulled him down into her shoulder and held on while people walked around them with their coffee.

"You're so cold," she said into his hair. "Where's your hat? You never wore a hat."

Penny stood next to me on the sidewalk, blowing her nose.

She'd come straight from a night shift. She was wearing scrubs under her good coat.

"I brought a dress," she said. "It's in the car. I'm not changing. Don't look at me like that."

"I'm not looking at you like anything."

"You're looking at me like a bride. It's unsettling."

The boy pulled up in a borrowed hatchback with Indiana plates, ten minutes late.

He was wearing his hoodie. Over it, very carefully knotted, he was wearing a tie.

"My mom said I had to dress up," he said.

"You look great," I said.

"I look like a substitute teacher."

The dollhouse rode up to the fourth floor in the courthouse elevator in Ambrose's arms.

A man in a security uniform watched it go by and didn't say a single word.

The courtroom was small and beige. There were six chairs.

Ambrose set Gravemoor down on the chair at the end of the front row, facing the judge.

Mouse's face appeared in the ballroom window.

She'd brushed her hair. For the first time since I'd known her, it was pulled back behind her ears.

She had two dark, shining eyes. A round little face. A gap where a tooth should be.

Ambrose stared at her. So did I.

"What?" said Mouse. "It's a wedding."

The judge was a tired woman with reading glasses who did eleven of these every Friday.

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