Chapter 4: The Certificate

Gavin caught my wrist before I reached the stairs.

"You can go to Savannah for a vacation," he said. "Don't use leaving as a threat to make me feel guilty."

I looked at his hand until he let go.

It was the same hand that had once carried my broken shoe through a Savannah rainstorm, laughing the whole way.

I went upstairs and shut the bedroom door.

Last winter, Corinna had lost a client and Gavin told me to fix it, and I refused.

That night my mother's payments were stopped.

He said he would start them again once I apologized to Corinna in person.

Corinna made me wait two hours in a hospital hallway.

Then she looked down at me and said she wasn't sure I meant it.

So I knelt on the tile and said it again.

When my mother asked about my swollen knees, I told her I had tripped.

The next afternoon I was pulling papers out of the file cabinet for my mother's transfer to the Savannah hospital.

The hospital wanted a copy of our marriage certificate for her new insurance form.

I held it under the lamp.

The registration number on the certificate had one digit fewer than the number on the lawyer's cover letter stapled to it.

I took the Q train to the county clerk's office with the paper in a plastic sleeve.

The clerk, a tired man with a lanyard, typed in our names, then tried Gavin's name alone, then mine.

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