Chapter 11: City Hall

Dean got up off his knee slowly, with grass stains on both legs.

"You're being childish," he said. "You can't marry a man you've known for twenty minutes."

"I've known him sixteen years," I said. "I just haven't been allowed to."

The pastor looked at the sky.

My mother had both hands over her mouth.

Phyllis shut the front door on all of them, took one look at us, and went to the phone.

"I'm calling the clerk at the probate court," she said. "She owes me for twenty years of free flu shots."

Giles and I stood in the hall with our hands still joined.

I let go first.

"We should agree on what this is," I said.

"All right."

"It's for Dean. So he stops. So I'm out of reach in a way he can't argue with."

"Yes."

"Nothing at night."

He took that without blinking.

"If that's what you want."

"It is."

"Then I have one rule, too."

"Go on."

"You can leave any day," Giles said. "You don't owe me a reason."

His voice didn't change.

"But you say it to my face. You don't send a note and you don't go through someone else."

He didn't look away.

I understood what he meant.

"I promise," I said.

"Then we're agreed."

Phyllis put her head around the kitchen door.

"The clerk says eleven-thirty. Tillie, you'll wear the green dress. It's still in your suitcase. I saw it last night."

It was the dress from my mother's dinner, the only good one I owned.

I hadn't known I had packed it until I looked down.

At eleven twenty-five, we climbed the courthouse steps.

I wore the green dress and my grandmother's brooch.

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