Chapter 4: The Same Steps

I did not sleep. At eight the next morning, I stood in the vault of my bank with my certificate in my hand.

My father waited in the car with a thermos and his glasses on.

"You're sure you want to do it yourself?" he had asked.

"I'm sure."

"Fine. I'll sit here and look dangerous."

The Cook County Clerk's office had the same wide stone steps I remembered.

Eight years ago, Brent had pulled me up them by my hand, laughing.

Today a hoodie with a phone stood on the third step.

"Fam," the redhead said into it, "she came back. The mistress is here at the courthouse, with a new outfit and everything."

I was wearing a gray suit and a scarf over my hair. The paint had stained my scalp a dull pink.

I walked up the steps without slowing down.

The comments ran past her shoulder. Somebody wrote, she looks ashamed. Somebody wrote, she looks like a liar.

I looked like a woman with a very good reason to be there.

Inside, I took a number.

The clerk who called it had reading glasses on a chain, and she looked at me for one long second before she smiled.

"Ma'am. I saw the video."

"Then you know why I'm here."

"I do." She did not say it unkindly. "What do you need?"

"A certified copy of my marriage license. And a certified copy of any other marriage record for Brent Allen Pruden."

She typed.

I watched her face while the screen loaded. It changed on the second line.

"Ma'am. I'm going to print both."

"Please."

The printer ran for a long time.

She stamped each page, signed them, and slid them across the counter in a manila folder.

I opened the first one.

It was Shelby Marie Dray. Age twenty. Brent Allen Pruden. Age twenty-four.

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