Chapter 4: Friday at the Courthouse

We got married on Friday at eleven in the morning, in a judge's office that smelled like sunflower seeds.

The clerk had told us the waiting period was three days, and she said it.

The judge waived it anyway.

"A county-wide scandal counts as good cause," he said, and spat a shell into a coffee can.

He had known Grandpa for fifty years.

He wore a short-sleeved dress shirt with a pen in the pocket and a robe hung on a coat rack behind him.

The witnesses were the lawyer and the court clerk.

The clerk was a Lions Club member.

I understood that I had just handed my business to the fastest mouth in Pratt County, and I couldn't make myself mind.

Colby stood beside me in the same pressed shirt he'd worn to the reading.

He had cut himself shaving, right at the jaw, and put a scrap of toilet paper on it.

I had decided not to tell him about the toilet paper.

It was the only thing in the room that made me feel better.

The lawyer cleared his throat.

"Before we start, Casey, there's something I'm supposed to give you."

He took a small envelope out of his briefcase.

My name was on the front in Grandpa's blocky handwriting, in the blue pen he used for feed invoices.

"Your grandfather left it in my safe two years ago," the lawyer said. "He said you'd need it when you needed it."

I slid my thumb under the flap.

Inside was a thin gold band with a diamond chip in it about the size of a wheat berry.

My grandmother Edna's ring.

I remembered her wearing it while she shelled peas on the porch.

A note was folded around it.

For when you choose.

I read it once, and I put it in my pocket so nobody would see my face.