Chapter 14: The Church Steps Return
The church was empty by the time we got there. Sunday morning, just past eight, and the parking lot had maybe three cars in it. The light was the same as the day before — no, the week before — that warm, flat daylight that made the stone look pale and clean. The steps had been swept. No petals left. Someone had cleared them, I guess the sexton, or the wind. I kept looking for a stray one in the cracks and there wasn't any.
Maya had asked me to come. She didn't say it was for closure or any of that. She just said, "I want to go back with you before we do anything else." She drove. I sat with my hands in my lap. My tux was back in the closet at the apartment. I was in jeans and a gray hoodie. It felt wrong to be dressed like that on those steps, but also right.
We stood at the bottom for a minute and didn't move. The doors were closed. You could hear the organ inside, someone practicing, muffled through the wood.
"Is this where you were standing?" she asked.
I nodded. I pointed to the second step from the top. "Right there. She was one step down. I was here."
She took my hand and we walked up together. The stone was cool. I stopped on that exact step. The light hit it the same way.
"Will you read it again?" she said. "Out loud. Where you first read it."
I had the note folded in my wallet. I hadn't unfolded it since the county clerk's office. The paper was soft at the creases now, the edges starting to fray a little. I opened it. My birth name and the date, in blue ink that had bled a little into the fibers. Her handwriting. I cleared my throat.
I read it. Just those two lines. My voice was flat. I didn't try to make it mean anything. I said the name. I said the date. February 14, 1993. The organ kept playing behind the doors, same chord over and over.
Maya didn't say anything right away. She just listened. Then she said, "Okay."
I folded it again, but not before she touched the edge of it with her fingertip.
I had brought the court letter too, folded in the same pocket. The letter from the clerk with the seal at the top, confirming the record. I hadn't wanted them together, but that morning it felt like they belonged together. I crouched down.
I set them both on the stone. The note on the left, the letter on the right. I smoothed them flat with my palm. The wind tried to lift a corner and I held it down with a small stone I found by the railing. It wasn't symbolic. I just didn't want them to blow away.
"You brought them to leave them?" Maya asked.
"No," I said. "I want a picture that's mine."
I took my phone out. Not to add to the gallery, not to favorite anything. I opened the camera. I knelt so the stone filled the frame — the two papers against that pale gray, the texture of the rock, my shoe at the edge of the shot. I took one photo. Then another from straight above. The shutter sound was loud in the quiet.
I looked at the screen. The image was clear. No blur. Just paper on stone in daylight.
"That's for you," Maya said.
"Yeah," I said. "Not for anyone else. Just so I know I was here and this is what it was."
I picked both papers up and put them back in my wallet, note first, then the letter behind it. I stood. My knees popped.
We sat down on that step together. Not posing. Just sitting. Her white sneakers next to my old boots. She leaned her shoulder into mine.
"I've been thinking about next Saturday," I said. I had been thinking about it all week, how to say it without making it another event people could argue over. "I don't want a redo. I don't want the whole reception over again with everyone watching to see how we act."
She looked at me.
"I want a toast," I said. "Small. In the church hall. Ten people maybe. Just the people we choose. You and me. No big entrance. No first dance if we don't want it. Just a glass and we say what we want to say. For us."
Maya was quiet for a second. Then she nodded slowly.
"Chosen family only," she said.
"Yeah," I said. "We set the guest list. We set the rules. No speeches from anyone we didn't ask. Just us saying we're still here and we're doing it our way now."
She squeezed my hand. "I'd like that. A lot."
The organ stopped. A door opened somewhere inside and closed again. We didn't get up right away. I liked how quiet it was. No petals, no crowd, no one asking me to move or to explain. Just the stone under us, cool and solid, and the papers back where they belonged, in my pocket.
May you like
"We can leave when you're ready," Maya said.
I nodded. I wasn't ready for the next part yet — the hall, the people, the words we'd have to find — but I was ready to have these steps back. They weren't hers and they weren't theirs anymore. They were ours.
