Chapter 19: The Clerk's Counter

The marriage license counter at the Franklin County courthouse opens at nine, and by ten to nine the line ran out the door.

There were couples in jeans and couples in matching shirts.

A girl in a borrowed veil held her fiancé's hand with both of hers.

I stood in the line with the petition in an envelope and my good pen in my pocket.

I read the sign over the counter.

Marriage Licenses. Name Changes. Dissolutions.

Roz stood behind me with her arms crossed and a coffee in each hand.

"You can still go home," she said.

"I don't want to go home."

"I'm saying it's your right."

"I'm saying I'm going to enjoy this."

Travis came in at nine on the dot, in a gray suit with the tie knotted wrong.

He did not have a lawyer.

He did not have anyone.

The girl in the veil looked at him, and then at me.

I saw her work it out from the video, and her whole face changed.

"Oh my God," she whispered to her fiancé. "It's the florist."

"Who?"

"The one who read the certificate. At the country club. It's her."

The line shifted to make room for us.

Nobody was rude about it.

A woman in front of me turned around and said, quietly, "I loved the arch."

"Thank you," I said.

"Next," the clerk called.

She was a stout woman in her fifties, with reading glasses on a beaded chain.

She looked at the envelope I laid down without surprise.

"Names?"

"Jenna Corliss and Travis Odell. Joint petition for dissolution."

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