I couldn’t demand an explanation.
I couldn’t even force him to sit across from me and watch the expression on my face.
I kept reading.
“If I gave you a problem you could solve, I knew you would solve it.”
That sentence hurt the most.
Because it was true.
For two years, I had constantly offered Larry things.
Coffee.
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Food.
Warm socks.
Shelter phone numbers.
Once, during a brutal cold spell, I spent half my lunch break calling shelters until I found an available bed.
Larry always thanked me.
But it had never occurred to me that during those two years, he had also learned something about me.
He had learned exactly how to ask me for help.
Near the bottom of the page, he had written:
“Before you decide what kind of jerk I was, go back to the courthouse where we got married. Ask for Margaret. Tell her you’re my wife.”
For a few minutes, I seriously considered throwing the letter away.
Instead, an hour later, I was standing inside the courthouse lobby.
Couples filled the plastic chairs.
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A woman in a white jumpsuit adjusted her lipstick while her fiancé held a bouquet.
A toddler crawled beneath a row of seats while his father tried to catch him.
Three weeks earlier, Larry and I had sat in those same chairs.
I remembered him rubbing his palms against his trousers again and again.
“You’re shaking,” I had told him.
“I’m dying. I think I’m allowed to shake.”
At the time, I accepted that explanation.
Now I wondered how many things I had accepted simply because asking another question had seemed unnecessary.
At the records counter, someone pointed me toward an older woman wearing red glasses.
“Margaret?”
She looked up.
“Yes?”
“My name is Sarah.”
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I hesitated.
“I’m Larry’s wife.”
Her hands froze above the keyboard.
“Larry?”
I nodded.
Her chair rolled backward.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Before I understood what was happening, she walked around the counter and hugged me.
I stood stiffly in her arms.
When she stepped back, her eyes were wet.
“When did he pass?”
“A week ago.”
She looked away for a moment.
“I knew he was sick. I didn’t know it was that close.”
I stared at her.
“You knew Larry?”
Margaret frowned slightly.
“Of course I did.”
“How?”
She glanced around the courthouse.
“He worked here.”
I stared at her.
“Here?”
“For twenty-eight years.”
My mouth fell open.
“Then how did he end up homeless?”
Margaret’s expression softened.
“His health started failing after retirement. Medical expenses ate through his savings. Then he lost his apartment.”
She shook her head.
“Larry was too proud to call any of us.”
“What did he do here?”
“Mostly marriage licenses.”
She removed her glasses.
“He never told you?”
“No.”
A faint smile touched her face.
“That sounds like Larry.”
“What does that mean?”
She paused.
Then she stood.
“Come with me.”
Margaret led me down a hallway and into a small civil ceremony room.
Against the wall stood a wooden wedding arch.
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I recognized it immediately.
“This is where Larry and I got married.”
“I know.”
I turned toward her.
“You were here?”
“No.”
She walked toward a cabinet.
“But Larry was here the afternoon before.”
I stared at her.
“Why?”
Margaret unlocked the bottom drawer.
“I asked him the same thing.”
She pulled out a thick binder and placed it on a table.
“He sat in that chair for almost an hour.”
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She pointed toward a seat beside the arch.
“What did he want?”
“Nothing.”
Margaret smiled.
“He said he was nervous.”
I almost laughed.
“A man who worked around weddings for twenty-eight years was nervous about getting married?”
“That’s exactly what I said.”
She rested her hand on the binder.
“He stared at that arch and told me, ‘Tomorrow, I’m standing on the other side of the desk.’”
Suddenly, I remembered Larry’s shaking hands on our wedding day.
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I had blamed the illness.
Maybe I had been watching something else entirely.
Margaret opened the binder.
“Look.”
Inside was an old marriage record.
Two names I didn’t recognize appeared at the top.
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