Chapter 24: No Stand-In

The Montgomery County courthouse in Dayton has a lobby with a clerk's counter, one metal detector and a ticket machine that jams.

I took a number.

It was number 12.

Maura stood beside me in a plain blue dress, with her hair down for the first time since I'd known her.

Peggy sat on the bench behind us in her church cardigan, holding her purse in her lap with both hands.

There were no photographers.

There was a man waiting for a dog license, and a woman with a stroller, and a security guard who had a bad knee.

"Number twelve," the clerk called.

I held the slip up before she could finish.

"That's us."

I did not give it to anyone.

The clerk was a young man with a sleepy face and a name tag I never read.

He turned the screen toward us.

"I have an application filed three weeks ago," he said. "Wayne Matthew Burdick and Maura Flaherty."

"That's right," Maura said.

"Both signatures are on it." He looked up. "Are you ready to proceed?"

"Yes," I said.

"Yes," Maura said, at the same time.

He almost smiled.

The ceremony took six minutes.

My mother signed as witness with her good pen, in her round, careful hand, and pressed so hard the paper dented.

I slid a plain steel ring onto Maura's finger.

It had been cut from a bar of my father's old shop steel, and I had turned it on his lathe myself.

It went on to the knuckle with a small, snug tug, and stopped.

"It fits," Maura whispered.

"I measured it twice."

"You asked me."

"I asked you first," I said.

She put a ring on me that she had bought herself, plain and a little too heavy, and her hand did not shake.

"By the authority vested in me," the clerk said, "I now pronounce you married."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Bride Chose Her Publicity Stunt from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.