“You know how much this means to me,” I said very quietly. “Thank you, Martin.” I picked up my huge cloth napkin and gently patted my face. Then I fished my own legal envelope out of my purse and shoved it across the table. He opened it with much the same apprehensive look I must have had. He scanned the first page and looked away, over the heads of the other diners, blinking.

“How’d you do it?” he asked finally.

I told him, and he laughed in a choky way when I talked about my representation of myself as a religious cultist. But he kept looking away, and I knew he would not look at me for fear of crying.

“Let’s go,” he said suddenly, and groping for his wallet, threw some money on the table.

We got out the door, adroitly dodging the young woman with the reservations book, who clearly wanted to ask us what was wrong. I put my arm around Martin’s waist, and his arm snaked around me, and I went across the gravel parking lot pretty briskly for a short woman wearing heels. Of course Martin wouldn’t forgo opening my door for me, though I had often reminded him I had functioning arms, and by the time he had gotten in his side, he was really breathless from trying to tamp the emotion back down inside. I turned around in the seat to face him and slid my arms around him. Sometimes I am very glad I am small. His arms went around me ferociously. He was crying.

My husband-to-be handed me the keys to our house the next morning.

“Go see it. Make some plans,” he said, knowing that was exactly what I wanted to do. I was pleased to be going by myself, and he knew that, too.

I showered and pulled on blue jeans and a short-sleeved tee, slapped on some makeup, stuck in some earrings, tied my sneakers, and drove a mile north of town.

The Julius house lay across open fields from Lawrence-ton, the fields usually planted in cotton. As I’d pointed out to Martin, you could see my mother’s subdivision from the house-if you went to the very back of the yard, out of the screen of trees the original owner had planted around the whole property, which was about an acre.