Chapter 35 · Your Fleet Is Waiting

The lighter clicked.

Garrett touched the flame to the corner of our marriage contract and let it eat.

The paper was cheap county stock, thick as a paper towel. It went up fast—brown at the edge, a sudden burst of orange, then a curl of black ash dropping straight onto the marble.

Smoke drifted up between us, smelling like spent matches and old cedar.

"Not in here," I said. "The sprinklers in this hall are older than I am."

"Then they could use the exercise."

He flipped the page. June’s signature caught first—that looping, practiced cursive she’d perfected in boarding school, the exact same stroke she used when she signed my mother’s medical release forms. Then my name went, scrawled in the cheap courthouse pen chained to the intake counter.

I waited for relief to hit. A clean breath. Anything.

Nothing came. My hands were still twitching from the auction floor. Three miles up the coastline, my mother was lying in a private care bed I hadn't scraped up the cash to cover yet. And I could still hear the snap those cuffs made when they locked around June’s wrists.