Chapter 23: The Mug on the Bench

Jasper's POV

The decree came on a Tuesday, in a plain envelope with a county seal.

I read it standing at the workbench with the shop door rolled halfway up and the morning sun on the concrete.

It was one page.

The marriage of Jasper MacAvoy and Lorna Standish was dissolved as of that date.

I read it three times, and then I sat down on the stool and laughed until my eyes stung.

For six years I had carried a woman's name on a license.

For three of them it had weighed on me every day.

Now it was paper, and the paper was in my hand, and nobody could take it back.

I folded it and put it in my shirt pocket.

Then I took the other thing out of the drawer.

It was a key on a plain steel ring.

It was brass, with a dent in the shaft.

It opened the front door of MacAvoy Marine Repair.

I had cut it myself on Saturday.

I set it beside the mug.

The mug had been there for a month.

Mireille left it on the bench every morning after her night shift, with cold coffee in the bottom.

Every morning I did not move it.

I heard the Subaru turn into the lot at seven-twenty.

Greta honked twice and drove off.

Mireille came through the door in her scrubs, her hair in a clip and her eyes half shut.

"You're up," she said.

"I'm up."

"You're standing very straight. That's suspicious."

I put the decree on the bench and slid it across to her.

She read it.

Her whole face changed, slowly, from tired to something I could look at for the rest of my life.

"It's over," she said.

"It's over."

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