Chapter 24: Every Line

We got married on a Tuesday at the Franklin County courthouse, in the same building where it all began.

I wore the blue dress, because it had been to the luncheon and the wedding that wasn't, and I wanted it to see one go right.

The baby wore a white knit cap and dozed in Yvette's arms until the clerk's stamp banged down.

Posy stood beside me in her borrowed blazer, with her son on her hip and a bunch of grocery-store tulips in her free hand.

"Are you nervous?" she whispered.

"I read the form three times."

"That's not what I asked."

"Yes," I said. "A little."

"Good. You were calm last time."

The clerk behind the glass was a tired woman with a stack of folders and a pen on a chain.

She looked at Elliot, then at me, then at the four people crowding the counter behind us.

"Witnesses?" she said.

"Two," Elliot said.

"Names for the form?"

"Posy Lundvall," Posy said, very clearly.

"Yvette Brannigan," Yvette said. "With two n's. Don't mess it up. I've been waiting for this since the day Willa moved onto my couch."

The clerk shrugged and wrote it down.

There were two minutes of questions, and a signature each.

I read the line before I signed it.

Then I read the line above it, and the line above that.

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