Chapter 21: Salida Courthouse

Ryan's POV

The Chaffee County courthouse opens at eight, and Kat made me stand on the steps at seven-forty in my wedding jacket.

"You look like a man being sentenced," she said.

"I feel like one."

"It's a divorce, Sam. You're being released."

She was grinning, but her eyes were wet, and I knew that look.

I'd seen it in the barn the night she hid me.

She'd had a sleeping bag under her arm and a calf's blood on her sleeve.

"Five years," I said.

"Five and a half."

"I never said thank you right."

"You said it every morning with coffee on my porch."

She nudged me with her shoulder.

"Shut up. I'll cry in front of the clerk."

Inside, the clerk was the same small gray woman from the rehearsal dinner.

She slid a form across the counter and tapped two lines.

"Petitioner and respondent," she said. "And down here, if either party wishes to restore a former name, check this box."

The box sat there on the paper.

I looked at it for a long time.

Ryan Brewer was a twenty-five-year-old who analyzed other people's statements and never opened his father's locked cabinet until it was too late.

Samuel Garland had fed calves at three a.m. in a blizzard and slept in a truck and learned every road in this valley.

One of them had left Annie.

The other had spent four years paying for it.

"Sam," Kat said quietly. "It's your call."

"I'm keeping it."

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