Chapter 4: Friday at Ten

The courthouse in the next town smelled of floor wax and old radiators.

I wore the only dress I owned that wasn't black, a blue one Hilda had taken in at the waist the night before with her mouth full of pins.

Nels wore a clean white shirt under the canvas coat, and he had shaved badly along the left side of his jaw.

He stood beside me at the clerk's window and did not look at me once.

That was fine, because I wasn't looking at him either.

Delores sat on a bench against the wall with her purse on her knees.

Travis sat next to her with his good hat in his lap, chewing gum.

They had arrived ten minutes early, in case we ran.

Hilda came through the door at the last minute in her wool coat, out of breath.

"I got behind a hay wagon for eleven miles," she said. "Don't you dare start without me."

"We're not starting without anyone," Delores said. "I'm the witness. I'm told Hilda is just a friend."

"I'm the one with the ring," Hilda said.

She opened her purse and took out a small gold band wrapped in a handkerchief.

"This was my husband's," she said, and put it in my palm. "Forty-one years on his finger, and he never once took it off to wash dishes."

"Hilda, I can't."

"He'd be furious if it sat in a drawer. Hush, child."

Nels had taken a single folded page from his coat.

He laid it on the clerk's counter and signed it before I could tell him what it said.

"You haven't read that," I said.

"I know what it says."

"Read it anyway."

"It says I want nothing of yours," Nels said, and handed the pen to Hilda to sign as the witness.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Stepmother Sold the Farm, So I Married the Man Who Left from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.