Chapter 24: Her Own Name

Appleton Hall looked the same on the second Friday as it had on the first.

Three hundred chairs faced the low stage, with the long table and the big white screen.

The cameras lined the drive again, and this time nobody shouted my name.

I walked up the aisle alone.

In the front row sat the board, in dark suits, with their hands folded.

Beside them, in a quilted vest she had clearly bought for the occasion, sat the owner of the laundromat on Fourth Street.

She waved at me with both hands.

I waved back.

In the third row, the aisle seat was taken by a young woman in a cream cardigan, with a sleeping baby on her lap.

Cora had come on the bus.

She had signed her statement on Monday, every page, as she had promised.

She would be sentenced in the spring, and her lawyer said it would be probation.

She did not look at me, and I did not look at her for long.

I looked at the baby, who was wearing a small knitted hat and snoring.

Zane stood at the side of the stage, in his charcoal suit and no tie.

He gave me one nod.

The lawyer waited at the long table with a folder.

"Madam Chair," he said. "Before the company, there is one other document."

"I know."

He slid it across.

It was a thin stack of pages, stapled at the corner, with a court seal at the top.

Dalton had signed his part three days ago in the district attorney's office.

He had pled guilty to the false identification and agreed to the divorce on my terms.

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