Chapter 6: The Clerk's Counter

Emmett's POV

The clerk at the county building on Clark Street had known me for eleven years.

She slid the file across the counter without asking why.

"You on a story?" she said.

"A wedding."

"You photograph a lot of those."

"I photograph one a week," I said. "This is the first one I've come here for."

The application was a single page, filled out in blue ink.

Hugh Thomas Alden, thirty-eight, on one line.

Elise Marchetti, twenty-nine, on the next.

Under it, in a firm square hand, in the box that asked for previous marriages: None.

His signature sat at the bottom, and below it a notary's stamp from the previous Monday.

I photographed the page with my phone, the stamp and the signature and the box.

Then I photographed it again with the good camera, flat on the counter under the window light.

It took four minutes.

Then I sat in a diner across the street and waited for his wife.

She came in at noon, in the same navy suit, and ordered black coffee, and did not take off her sunglasses.

"You wanted to see me," Odessa said.

"I wanted to see how you are."

"Don't be kind. I don't have a place to put it."

I turned my phone around and showed her the page.

She looked at it for a long time.

Her mouth made a small, tight movement. It was almost satisfaction.

"None," she said. "In his own handwriting."

"What do you want out of this, Mrs. Alden?"

"Peace."

She said it quickly, and she said it to her coffee.

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