Chapter 2

The recorder's office called back Monday at nine.

I took it standing in the kitchen, in the same spot, with the tent still up in the yard because the rental company doesn't collect until Tuesday.

"The deed's held in your name alone," the clerk said. "Rennie Hollis, sole, since the refinance in two thousand nine."

"Good."

"There's one other thing on the file, though. There's a pending application to add a joint owner. It's incomplete — it's missing a signature, so it hasn't gone through."

I put my hand flat on the counter.

"When was it submitted?"

"Received the eleventh of March."

March. The eleventh of March was a Tuesday. On the eleventh of March I drove Grant's mother to her eye appointment in Ashford and sat in the waiting room for two hours reading a magazine about boats.

"Who submitted it?"

"Grant Hollis."

I said thank you. I said it twice, which is what I do when I need three more seconds.

Three months. The tent, the trio, the two-tier cake — those took a month, maybe six weeks. The paperwork took three.

You don't get angry in a straight line. It arrives in the wrong order. What came up first wasn't the yard or the dress. It was the eleventh of March, and the magazine about boats, and how I'd told his mother she looked nice.

Josie came down in yesterday's clothes and stood in the doorway.

"Aunt Denise put the pictures up," she said. "The whole album. She tagged Teagan."

"Tagged her what?"

Josie turned her phone around and held it out at arm's length, the way you hand somebody something hot.

Under the second photograph, the one on the steps, Denise had written: *The bride finally got her day.*

And under that, six comments deep, Fran Lowell from two streets over had written: *Congratulations Mrs. Hollis!!*

I looked at that for a while.

"Are you going to say something?" Josie said.

"Yes."

"To Dad?"

"No," I said. "To the county."