Chapter 24: She Signs First

We ran the whole mile in the dark, with our coats over our wedding clothes and Don's shirt buttoned wrong.

He carried my shoes.

I carried the hem of my dress up to my knees, and I laughed so hard that the baby kicked for the first time.

I stopped in the middle of the street.

"Betsy? What is it?"

"Something fluttered."

He dropped to his knees on the cold asphalt and put his ear to my stomach.

A pickup truck slowed, saw us and honked in approval.

"I can't hear anything," he said.

"It's too early to hear. It's not too early to feel."

I took his hand and put it low on the right side.

We waited.

The kick came again, tiny and furious, against his palm.

His face broke open.

"That's ours," he whispered.

"That's ours. Now run, it's eleven fifty."

The town hall was dark except for one window.

The clerk sat behind her counter in her reading glasses, with a tin of butter cookies and the leather register open in front of her.

"Seven minutes," she said, without looking up. "I was about to go home."

"We're sorry," Don said, panting.

"You're a Russo. You're always late. Sign."

She turned the book around and set a black pen on the page.

Two lines.

One for each of us.

I looked at the blank line on the right, and I remembered another line, in another house, in the middle of a snowstorm.

I remembered a gold pen, a study rug under my knees, and a husband dancing below me.

I had signed that one second.

I had signed it under his name, in a hurry, with my heart in pieces, because somebody else had already made my decision.

Don stood next to me and did not touch the pen.

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