Chapter 21: Final Decree

Elise's POV

The courthouse steps were white with frost at nine o'clock the next morning.

I climbed them in my good coat with Dot on one side and Sydney on the other.

Seth stood at the bottom with his hands in his pockets, because I had asked him to stay where I could see him.

The same clerk waited inside the glass door, with the same stack of forms.

"Mrs. Harmon," she said. "The decree is signed. I need your signature, and his, and one answer."

"What answer?"

"Whether you're restoring a former name."

"Mine is Harmon," I said. "I've signed it more than five thousand times. It stays."

She stamped the page.

Stuart was already there.

He stood on the top step with his hat in his hand, in a dark coat I had bought him four winters ago.

He had come an hour early, the clerk said.

He had shaved badly and he looked older than he had at the Grand.

"I'll sign out here," he said. "If that's all right. It's where it started."

"It's fine."

The clerk held the clipboard under the pen.

He signed, and I watched his hand.

Every seven in the date had a bar through the stem.

I signed under him.

The clerk stamped it, and tore off the carbon.

"That's final," she said. "Congratulations, I think, to both."

"Thank you," I said.

Stuart folded his copy into his pocket.

"I brought you something," he said.

"I told you no cards."

"You told me no cards under a plate. This isn't under a plate."

He took a yellow card from inside his coat, and I knew the size and the stock.

I looked at it for a while before I took it.

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