Chapter 13: Overruled

I filed the petition at ten past nine on Wednesday morning.

The clerk at the Franklin County courthouse slid it through the window and stamped it without looking up.

"Anything else, ma'am?"

"No," I said. "That's everything."

It was one page with my name on it, and Dalton's below mine.

I stood on the courthouse steps with the receipt in my hand, and the wind pulled at my coat.

I had thought I would feel lighter.

I felt tired, and I had a receipt.

My phone buzzed with a text from Dalton, sent a minute after the clerk's stamp.

Whit says to wait before I answer. Please call me, Hal.

I put the phone face down in my bag.

All day I thought about Kip's hearing at nine the next morning.

I thought about the tackle box too, and the man I had slept beside who was alive on my kidney.

I hadn't told Kip yet.

I told myself it was because I didn't know how.

At six I told my mother I was going to Clintonville.

She looked at me over her reading glasses, and she took the dish towel off her shoulder.

"Take the pie," she said. "It's the cherry."

Kip opened the door in his shirtsleeves with a legal pad in one hand.

"Hallie. Is something wrong?"

"I filed today."

He stood very still in the doorway.

"I know what I said at the cemetery," I said. "Nothing until I'm nobody's wife."

"You don't need a reason to come in."

"The pie was for that anyway."

"You don't need a reason."

"The clerk stamped it at nine ten. I'm not asking you to wait for the judge."

I put the pie on the hall table and turned around.

He had followed me inside and shut the door, and now he was standing very close.

"Nobody's wife," he said quietly. "That was the rule."

"It was my rule. I'm overruling it."

"On what grounds?"

"On the grounds that I want you."

I said it plainly, in the hall, with the light on.

His throat moved.

"Hallie, you were in my spare room ten days ago asking if surgeons want to be thanked."

"I know what I asked."

"I'd rather you were angry at me than grateful."

"I'm not grateful."

I took the legal pad out of his hand and set it on the table.