I want to be honest about the next part, because it is the part I am least proud of.
For ten days after Daniel showed up outside my office, nothing happened. I went to work. I ate my lunch at my desk. I took the bus to the county on my afternoon off and stood in the records room while a clerk named Beatrice printed me a certified copy of the death record.
"Deceased status confirmed," Beatrice said, and stamped it.
I put the certified copy in my bag and went home, and I sat with it on my couch and looked at it for an hour.
This one page was the whole thing. One page said that a man I had never met, whom I had married on paper without knowing it, was now dead as far as the state was concerned. It was not true. He was alive, somewhere, eating a sandwich, probably, being furious.
But it w
