“Good luck on that!” I heard Mrs. Harris say. “If he’s
still holed up in the mountains, we don’t get good cell
service there and he never answers a land line.”
As Reid stepped out to place his call, I signaled to
the divorcing couple. It was a do-it-yourself filing. Both
were only twenty-two. No children, no marital prop-
erty to divide, no request for alimony by either party. I
looked at the two of them.
“According to these papers, you were only married
four months before you called it quits. Are you sure you
gave it enough time?”
“Oh yes, ma’am,” said the woman. “We lived to-
gether two years before we got married.”
The man gave a silent shrug.
His soon-to-be-ex-wife said, “Marriage always changes
things, doesn’t it?”
I couldn’t argue with that. I signed the documents
that would dissolve their legal bond and wished them
both better luck next time.
“Won’t be a next time,” the young man said quietly.
62
C H A P T E R
7
% On Thursday, I had lunch with Portland at a Tex-
Mex restaurant that’s recently opened up only two
blocks from the courthouse. Although the sun was fi-
nally shining, the mercury wasn’t supposed to climb
higher than the mid-thirties, which made chile rellenos
and jalapeno cornbread sound appealing to me.
Portland was game even though she couldn’t eat any-
thing very hot or spicy.
As we were shown to our table, she tried to remem-
ber just how many times this place had changed hands
in the last eight or nine years since the original longtime
owner died and his heirs put it up for sale.
“First it was Peggy’s Pantry, then the Souper Sandwich
House, but wasn’t there something else right after
Peggy’s?”
“The Sunshine Cafe?” I hazarded.
“No, that was two doors down from here, where the
new card shop’s opened.”
Neither of us could remember and our waitress spoke
63
MARGARET MARON
too little English to be of help. She handed us menus,
took our drink orders and went off to fetch them.
“I swear I feel just like Clover,” Portland complained
