Chapter 4: Mrs. Seavey

The St. George town clerk married us at her counter at nine-fifteen on Monday morning, between a dog license and a boat registration.

She was also a notary public, and she did not ask a single question.

She read from a card, and Torsten said "I do" so loudly that the man waiting behind us jumped.

The license said Susannah Joan Lunt.

Nobody in that office knew what else I was.

Torsten took a plain gold band out of his shirt pocket.

"My grandmother's," he said. "She left it to me, not to my father."

It fit my finger on the first try.

"You may kiss," the clerk said, and went back to her stamp.

He kissed me on the forehead, very lightly, in front of the dog license man.

Then he took my hand and we walked out into the lot.

Wyatt's black truck was parked across two spaces with the engine running.

Wyatt got out.

He had shaved and put on a clean shirt, and he stood by his fender with his hands in his pockets.

"Mar," he said. "Can I talk to you?"

Torsten stopped at my shoulder and said nothing.

I felt him there, warm and enormous, not touching me.

"Say it," I said.

"Dad says you'll be back in a week," Wyatt said.

He glanced at his brother, and the glance went up a long way.

"He says Torsten is doing this to get at us," Wyatt said. "Mar, he's the family mule."

"He's been fixing Dad's engines since he was eighteen," Wyatt went on. "He couldn't tell you what a menu costs."

"He asked what I wanted for breakfast this morning," I said. "You never did."

"That isn't fair."

"Fourteen months, Wyatt."

His face worked.

He looked at my left hand and saw the band, and he went a shade paler.

"That's Gram's," he said.

"It is," said Torsten.

It was the first thing he had said, and he said it mildly.

Wyatt looked from the ring to me and back.

"You don't know what you're walking into," he said. "Whatever you think you're getting out of this."

"I'm getting a husband," I said. "Go home to your fiancee."

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