The Secret That Broke Us novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: The Counter

The county building has one clerk's counter on the ground floor, and on Monday morning it had a line.

I stood at the end of it in my good coat, with Nate on my left and his mother on my right.

Nate had a gym bag over his shoulder.

He held it against his hip with both hands.

The girl was in the sling on his chest, awake, looking at the ceiling lights.

The lawyer's folder had said that Kristin would file her petition at nine, in person, because she wanted it stamped in front of her.

She was early.

She came through the revolving door at ten to nine in her old soft sweater, the honey-colored one, with her hair brushed and her face made up.

The young lawyer walked half a step behind her.

She saw us and stopped.

For one second, she looked at the girl.

Then she walked to the counter as if we weren't there, and the line shuffled to let her through.

"I'd like to file this today," the lawyer said to the clerk.

"One moment, sir."

It was not a moment.

The clerk read, and typed, and read.

The dispatch center's day supervisor came out of the stairwell door with her badge on a lanyard, and behind her, in twos and threes, came the floor.

They had a break at nine.

I had not asked them to come.

They lined the far wall with their coffees, quiet, thirty-odd people who had spent nine years of nights learning how to listen without a sound.

Kristin heard them.

She turned.

"This is a private matter," she said.

"It's a public counter," the supervisor said.

The clerk said, "Ms. Haugen, this petition asks the court to set aside a signed consent. You'll need to state your grounds."

"My mother pressured me," Kristin said. "I was unwell. The father is unfit. He's homeless and unemployed."

Nate stepped up to the counter.

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