The Abandoned Wife novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Corrected

The Allen County courthouse in Fort Wayne has a marble staircase.

My father used to say it was cut by someone who hated bus mechanics.

I climbed it three weeks later on a Tuesday, without a limp I could hide, in my deep green suit.

Bernadine took the steps one at a time beside me, with the bulldog tapping every stair.

Emil carried a folder.

The desk nurse from Pell County walked behind him in her navy cardigan, because I had asked her to come.

Courtroom Four was small and brown, with a bad clock.

The judge was a woman in her sixties with half-glasses and a voice.

"We are here," she said, "to hear a petition to correct a certificate of death."

"In thirty years on this bench, I have never done that."

She looked over her glasses at me.

"Ms. Salter, you will have to forgive me if I look at you for some time."

"I'd be disappointed if you didn't, Your Honor."

A few people in the gallery smiled.

The state's attorney's office had filed its own paper that morning.

It stated that the remains in a marble grave in Chicago had been exhumed two weeks earlier.

They had been tested against my swab, and they were not mine.

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