Different people.
Different years.
The same handwriting.
“What is this?”
“People sometimes came in without anyone else,” Margaret said. “Larry would step out from behind the counter and witness for them.”
The same handwriting.
She turned another page.
“He hated the thought of somebody getting married with nobody standing there.”
I touched one of his signatures.
It was strange seeing Larry’s handwriting from decades before I’d known him.
Same narrow L.
Same crooked y.
“How many?”
I touched one of his signatures.
Margaret shrugged.
“Hundreds, probably.” She smiled. “He used to joke that he’d attended more weddings than anyone in the building and never had to remember an anniversary.”
A laugh escaped me.
It disappeared when the obvious question arrived.
I touched one of his signatures.
“Was he ever married?”
Margaret closed the binder.
She didn’t answer.
“Margaret?”
“Once.”
My eyes searched her face.
“To who?”
She looked directly at me.
“You.”
I sat down.
For 28 years, Larry had watched strangers enter that building as two separate names and leave legally connected.
“Was he ever married?”
Whenever they had nobody beside them, he stepped forward and signed as their witness. His name appeared again and again, but never beside the word spouse.
Not until me.
Margaret opened another drawer.
Never beside the word spouse.
“There’s something else. Larry asked me to pull this after the marriage was recorded, in case you ever came looking for me.”
She removed a clear plastic sleeve and placed it in front of me.
Inside was a copy of our marriage certificate.
My name.
Larry’s.
And beside his:
SPOUSE.
“There’s something else.”
I remembered how carefully he’d folded his copy after the ceremony.
How he’d asked the clerk twice where to sign.
How I’d teased him.
“You’re acting like this is a real wedding.”
I’d teased him.
Larry had gone quiet for a second.
Then he’d smiled.
“First marriage. Let me have my nerves.”
I’d laughed.
Now I couldn’t.
Margaret sat beside me.
“Did Larry tell you why he wanted to marry you?”
I’d laughed. Now I couldn’t.
“He told me a reason.”
I explained about the letter.
The burial story.
The way he’d admitted making the situation sound worse because he knew I would help.
When I finished, Margaret didn’t defend him.
“That wasn’t fair to you, dear.”
“He told me a reason.”
I looked at her.
“He knew you’d say yes to a problem,” she said. “Larry was always better at asking for practical help than asking anybody to choose him.”
Margaret closed the binder, but I kept looking at Larry’s signature.
“What was I really saying yes to?”
I kept looking at Larry’s signature.
Margaret looked at the certificate.
“That isn’t my story to tell.”
I wanted to demand an answer.
Then I remembered the remaining pages of Larry’s letter in my purse.
He’d told me to come here first.
He wanted me to see this.
I wanted to demand an answer.
The witness signatures.
The certificate.
The word spouse.
I left the courthouse and took the subway toward home.
But when the train reached Larry’s old stop, I got off.
At the coffee kiosk, the woman behind the counter recognized me.
“Two?”
The woman behind the counter recognized me.
I almost said yes.
Then I looked toward the empty place beside the station entrance.
“Yeah.”
She handed me my coffee with cream and Larry’s black.
I carried both outside and sat in his usual spot.
For two years, I’d never stayed there long enough to finish a cup.
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