Not His Wife novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Fourth of July, Again

"My mother's," Anson said.

He put his hand over the pocket.

"I've carried it all week. I'm not going to ask you anything on a courthouse step in the rain."

"Why not?"

"Because the last man who asked you for something on a stage got what he deserved."

Bernice, behind us, made a noise I chose to hear as a laugh.

"Saturday," she announced, to the whole wet crowd. "My niece's yard. One o'clock. Bring a chair."

"What's on Saturday?" the bow tie asked.

"The Fourth of July," said my aunt. "Again."

On Saturday the sun came out for the first time in two weeks.

Forty people stood in my mother's backyard with paper plates.

Bernice had put the grill where Alyssa had stood in her yellow sundress four Julys ago.

She worked it herself, in her apron, with the navy hat hung on a nail on the fence.

"You took it off," I said.

"Nobody here needs convincing."

The woman from Cleveland sat in a lawn chair with a plate on her knee, laughing with two ladies from the altar guild.

The kid in the headphones had brought a speaker, and he played the one song my aunt allowed, over and over.

I stood by the porch steps with a lemonade, looking at all of it.

Forty people had come for me, and Alyssa had never counted on a single one.

"Ivy," said Anson, at my elbow.

He held out a folded printout.

"The lawyer in Ohio. The judge signs the decree Tuesday."

I read it twice.

"You're free on Tuesday."

"I'm free on Tuesday," he said, and his voice was careful.

"Good," I said, and put the printout in my pocket against my mother's pearls.

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