Page 18 of Marrying the Pakhan

“I’ll have the final draft ready by tomorrow. You can both sign before the ceremony.” Denise sets her pen down, studying me for a moment longer than the paperwork requires. “Can I say something off the record?”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve watched a lot of clients do desperate things for custody cases. Fake addresses, staged photos, one memorable incident involving a borrowed dog to look more stable.” She almost smiles. “This is the first one that’s actually made me hope it works out for reasons that have nothing to do with the case.”

“You think we’re going to make it.”

“I think you two look like something real wearing a contract as a disguise. I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before.” She stands, signaling the meeting’s actual end. “But for what it’s worth, Harper, I hope this one lasts. Longer than a year. Longer than the case even needed it to. If he’s a good man.”

I don’t have a good response to that, so I just thank her and let myself feel for the first time all morning, something other than logistics.

By the time I get home that evening, Ginger’s at the kitchen table finishing homework, and I sit down across from her, the way I did the first time I told her about any of this custody stuff, months ago now.

“Hey, baby. I need to tell you something.”

She looks up, watchful in the specific way she still gets sometimes when a sentence starts like that. “Is it bad?”

“No. Good, actually.” I reach across and squeeze her hand. “Remember Viktor, from the park?”

“The swing pusher.”

“The swing pusher.” I smile despite myself. “We’re getting married tomorrow.”

Her eyes go wide. “Tomorrow, tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, tomorrow.”

“Can I come?”

“Not this time. It’s a really small wedding, just some grown-up paperwork stuff. But afterward, we’re going to start getting ready to move into his house, all three of us together.”

Ginger considers this with the seriousness she brings to everything lately, working through the actual shape of what I’ve told her rather than just reacting to the surface of it. “Will I still see Mrs. Bennett?”

“Every day you want to, I promise.”

“Okay.” She nods, apparently satisfied, and goes back to her homework like the conversation’s fully resolved, and I sit there watching her, marveling again at how much steadier she’s gotten these last few months, how much less each new change seems to cost her now than it used to.

Tomorrow, I think, watching her erase something and start over with the patient concentration only a six-year-old brings to long division. Tomorrow I become someone’s wife for real, on paper and everywhere else that matters, and somehow, sitting here in my own kitchen, it doesn’t feel like the leap it should.

Wedding Day

I’ve tried on four outfits by seven in the morning, which is absurd for a wedding with no guests, no cake, and no actual romance attached to it, and I still can’t decide if the navy dress looks like I’m trying too hard or not hard enough.

I go with the navy dress.

I stand in front of the mirror longer than I need to, smoothing a wrinkle that isn’t actually there, and I catch myself thinking about what Mia would say if she could see me right now.

Something dry, probably. Something about how I’ve never once done anything the easy way in my entire life, and here I’m proving her right one more time from wherever she’s watching, if she’s watching at all.

Ginger’s already at school by the time I’m doing my hair for the second time, dropped off twenty minutes early with a story about a dentist appointment that felt easier than the truth, and some part of me hates how easily the lie came out. She knows the real reason now, at least.

Today just isn’t the day I want to stand in a school drop-off line explaining the details.

My hands won’t stop shaking while I do my mascara, which is ridiculous, because again, this isn’t even a real wedding. It’s paperwork with a judge attached.

I tell myself that twice in the mirror and believe it exactly as much as I did the first time.

I text Denise on my way out the door, one line, doing this in an hour, and her reply comes back almost instantly, see you there, since she’s coming in person this time, not just checking in from her office.