Chapter 9: Biscuit Wore a Bow Tie

Jasper didn't let go of me.

He moved his hands from under my shirt to the outside of it, and held on.

"Then live first," he said. "I'm not going anywhere."

"You don't know that."

"I know where I sleep. It's a hammock forty feet from you. Ask Biscuit."

I laughed against his neck, and it came out wet.

We sat there until the moon went behind the marsh.

He didn't kiss me again.

He walked me to the houseboat door and said good night through it.

The morning of the hearing, Ida came out of her house carrying a dress over one arm and Biscuit under the other.

The dress was pale blue cotton, with little white buttons down the front.

"Mine, from nineteen eighty-four," she said. "I took the hem up last night. You can't marry a man in his T-shirt."

"It's a hearing, Ida."

"It's a hearing first."

Biscuit wore a red bow tie on a piece of elastic.

He looked very serious about it.

"Is the dog coming?" Jasper asked.

"The dog is a witness."

"Dogs can't be witnesses."

"Then he's moral support. Get in the truck."

Jasper had found a white button-down somewhere and ironed it badly.

He kept tugging at the collar.

I fixed it for him in the truck.

He let me.

The courtroom was small and wood-paneled and freezing cold.

Corbett wasn't there.

His lawyer was, a silver-haired man in a gray suit with a leather folder and two junior lawyers behind him.

He smiled at me.

The judge was a woman of about seventy, with half-glasses on her nose.

She read the petition. She read our license application.

She looked down at Biscuit, who sat beside Ida's chair in his bow tie.

She didn't say anything about Biscuit.

"Ms. Vane," she said. "Come up here, please."

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