Chapter 4: Courthouse

We were married on Friday in a wood-paneled room at the Allegheny County Courthouse.

The judge had known Gran for fifty years, and nobody mentioned the three-day waiting period.

I wore the one dress I'd brought, navy, with the sleeves pushed up.

Rafe wore a charcoal suit and a bandage under his shirt that made him stand a little crooked.

Gran sat beside him, holding her cane, small and bright, her braid pinned up on her head.

"You look like a hostage," she told me as we waited.

"I feel like a witness."

"Same thing. Smile."

The judge had just opened his folder when the doors swung wide.

Anselm Corliss walked in alone.

I knew him from photographs, but they had left out his voice.

It was soft, almost kind, the voice of a man who had never in his life needed to raise it.

His silver hair was combed back, his gray suit was cut perfectly, and his pale eyes went straight to me.

"Rafael," he said. "A word."

"No," Rafe said.

"You were in an accident. You are not well. A marriage to the nurse who happened to be standing there is a decision no court would call sound."

"Then no court will mind it," Rafe said. "Sit down, Father, or leave."

Anselm didn't sit.

He turned to me instead and looked at me for a long moment, politely, and with interest.

"Miss Dell. I'd like to understand what you want."

"To get married," I said.

"Everyone wants something. Name it now, before you sign, and I'll make it easier than he can."

"Rafe asked first," I said.

For half a second something moved behind his eyes.

I had waited fourteen years to see this man's face, and he didn't know mine.

My mother's mouth was somewhere on it, and he was looking right at it.

"Where are your people, Miss Dell?" he said.

"I don't have people."

"Everyone has people," he said.

"Not everyone, Mr. Corliss. If you want to stay, there are chairs."

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