He Thought I'd Forget novel · Chapter 29 of 32

Chapter 29: Hatherly

We made the clerk's office at three fifty-two.

The clerk was a tired man with reading glasses pushed up on his head.

He slid a petition across the counter and pointed to a box.

"Name you want."

I wrote it in capitals.

LEONA HATHERLY.

"Reason?"

"It's mine," I said. "I had it first."

He looked at me over the counter for a second.

Then he wrote "former name" in the box himself and stamped the form.

"Hearing in about a month," he said. "Bring ID."

The hearing took four minutes.

A young judge with a coffee mug read my petition, asked if anyone objected, and waited.

Nobody objected.

Jeanine, the kids and Clark sat in the first row, along with Davey, who objected loudly to his shoe.

"Granted," the judge said, and signed.

He turned the order around so I could see his signature.

"Good luck, Ms. Hatherly."

Ms. Hatherly.

I walked out of that courtroom into the hallway, and Jeanine was already crying.

"It's just paperwork," I said.

"Shut up," she said, and hugged me so hard my order crinkled.

My niece had made a sign on the back of a cereal box.

HATHERLY, in purple marker, every letter facing the right way.

"I checked it twice," she said.

"It's perfect," I said, and it was.

We went to the café to celebrate.

The owner had heard.

He'd cut HATHERLY into the top crust of a peach pie, and he'd run out of room, so the Y went down the side.

"Didn't plan the spacing," he said gruffly. "You'd have planned the spacing."

"It's the best sign in Bellevue," I said.

"Second best," he said, and pointed at his window.

That afternoon I went to the bank and stood at the same desk where I'd opened my account.

The woman there typed my new name into her computer and printed a form.

I signed it.

Leona Hatherly.

Not Aldane under a guardian's signature.

Not Aldane under anybody.

"Your new card will come in about a week," she said.

I said thank you, and then I said it again, and she looked at me.

That night Jeanine took Davey for a sleepover in the fort with the moat.

"The moat has been expanded," my nephew informed me. "It has a drawbridge now."

"Is it structural?"

He looked at Clark.

"Extremely," he said.

Clark came up my outside stairs at eight in the white shirt he'd worn to court, sleeves rolled to the elbow.

It had started to rain.

I could hear it on the slanted roof, soft and steady.

He stood in my doorway, dripping a little.

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