Chapter 8 - Paper At The County Office
I took the morning off and told work I had a dentist appointment. That was easier than explaining I needed to go stare at a piece of paper to prove my apartment was still mine.
The county records office was in the low brick building off the highway, next to the DMV. The parking lot was already half full by eight forty. Inside it smelled like old carpet and toner. A woman at the front desk pointed me toward Records without looking up from her computer.
I sat on one of the hard plastic chairs and waited for my number to come up on the little screen. B-47. Mine was B-52. My hands were sweating around the strap of my purse. I kept thinking about the venue deposit receipt folded in my wallet, my name printed neat across the top. That was supposed to make me feel safe. It didn't.
When they called my number I walked up to window three. The clerk was a man in his sixties with glasses on a chain and ink on his cuffs.
"I need to check the deed on my apartment," I said. I gave him the address and my last name. My voice sounded thin in that big room.
He typed for a while, frowning at the screen. The keyboard clacked loud. Then he nodded and printed something and disappeared into the back. I stood there listening to the fluorescent lights hum and a baby crying two windows over. I breathed in and out and tried to keep my shoulders still.
He came back with a folder and slid two pages across the counter under the glass.
"Here," he said. "Sole owner." He tapped my name with his fingertip. "No lien transfer. No second name. No quitclaim on file."
I stared at the letters of my own name. It looked strange typed like that. I read the parcel number twice.
"So there's nothing else attached to it?" I asked.
"Nothing recorded," he said. "Taxes current. No lien."
My knees loosened a little. I hadn't realized how tight I'd been holding them.
I didn't want to leave yet. I leaned a little closer to the glass.
"Can I ask — if I got married and I didn't have a prenup, could that change this?" I kept my voice low. "Could someone... get access to it just because of the marriage?"
He didn't react like it was a strange question. He must have heard worse every day.
"I'm not a lawyer," he said, pushing his glasses up. "But generally, what you owned before stays yours unless you add them, refinance together, or mix funds in a way that blurs it. Marriage doesn't auto-transfer a deed. Doesn't mean a divorce couldn't get messy over payments or improvements. That's lawyer territory."
I nodded. "I figured."
He pulled a sticky note from a drawer and wrote a number on it in blocky print.
"Legal aid clinic. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Free consult first visit. They handle this kind of question all day."
I took the note like it was something fragile. "Thank you."
"Want copies?" he asked.
"Yes, please."
He stamped the pages and ran them through the copier behind him. The machine whined and spit out warm copies. He handed them to me in a thin manila sleeve. I paid four dollars in quarters and ones at the little tray.
I stepped to the side table by the windows where a couple of survey books were chained down. I set the sleeve on the table and took out my phone — the same one with the light-colored case I'd held up in the fitting room. My thumb left a print on the back when I opened the camera.
I photographed the first page, then the second. I checked each shot to make sure the parcel number and my name were sharp and not cut off. The shutter sound was too loud in that quiet room. A man looking at plat maps glanced over, then looked away.
I slid the copies back into the sleeve and tucked the legal aid note inside with them. The paper felt solid in my hands. Real in a way the video on my phone sometimes didn't.
Outside, the sun had burned off the morning gray. The parking lot smelled like hot asphalt. I sat in my car with the AC blowing and looked at the photos on my phone once more, then at the paper copies on the passenger seat.
Nothing had been filed. My name was still the only name. That was the fact I could hold.
May you like
But the clerk's words stayed with me about mixing things and blurring lines. I thought about wedding checks and joint accounts and Daniel saying it would be easier if we just combined everything after. I thought about his mother leaning in close in that bright fitting area.
I put the car in drive and kept the sleeve flat so it wouldn't bend.
