Chapter 11: City Hall

We were married on Friday at ten past nine in a small room on the third floor of the county courthouse.

The room smelled of floor polish and old paper.

There was a plastic fern in the corner and a tired judge in a black robe who looked Cade up and down.

I wore my gray work suit, because the navy dress was for the eighteenth.

Brynn stood on my left in a pale yellow coat, holding a bouquet of grocery-store tulips she had bought on the way.

"Something borrowed," she whispered, shoving them into my hands. "Don't cry on them. They're from a bucket."

"I'm not going to cry."

"You look like you're going to be sick."

"That too."

Cade's assistant stood on the other side as the second witness.

Cade himself wore a black suit and no tie, and he did not smile.

The judge cleared his throat.

"Do you have rings?"

"I have one," Cade said.

He took a plain gold band out of his pocket and held it up.

It was thin and old and a little worn on the inside.

"My grandmother's," he said, only to me. "Theron has never touched it."

I didn't say anything.

The judge read the words fast.

"Do you, Cade Preston, take this woman?"

"I do."

"Do you, Ciara Kessling, take this man?"

I looked at the face of the man I had known for ten days.

I thought of the navy dress and the black button and the ring that was half a size too small.

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