Chapter 4 #2
"The weight of you getting into bed after I'd already fallen asleep," she said, quiet, still not looking at me.
"You always tried to be careful about it, not waking me, and you never once managed it, the mattress would dip and I'd surface just enough to feel you settle in, and I'd go right back to sleep because some part of me registered you were home safe.
I didn't know how much I relied on that feeling until I spent two years without it.
I still haven't slept a full night through since. Not really. Not the deep kind."
"I'm sorry," I said, and meant it with my whole chest.
"I know you are." She finally looked at me, and there was something steadier in her eyes than there'd been a moment before, like naming the small loss out loud had actually helped instead of hurting.
"I'm not telling you that to make you feel guilty.
I'm telling you because you asked, and because I think we're both going to have to get used to telling each other the small true things again. We got out of practice."
"Then let's get back into practice," I said. "One small true thing at a time."
The legal side of coming back from the dead turned out to be its own particular hell, one nobody warns you about in advance, because nobody expects to need the information.
I'd been declared legally deceased fourteen months prior — Josie had needed to, for the insurance, for the house, for a hundred practical reasons that had nothing to do with wanting me gone and everything to do with a widow trying to keep a roof over her head — and undoing that turned out to require a small mountain of paperwork that seemed to actively resent my continued existence.
Ivy took the case on, unofficially, the moment she heard, showing up at the clubhouse with three legal pads and an expression of grim delight I hadn't expected.
"I want it on record," she announced, spreading files across the bar like a general planning a campaign, "that four years of law school did not prepare me for un-declaring a man deceased.
There is no chapter on this. I checked. I called my old professor.
He laughed at me for a full minute and then admitted he didn't know either. "
"I appreciate you doing this," I said.
"Oh, I'm delighted. Genuinely. This is the most interesting thing that's crossed my desk since Viper's cousin tried to trademark his own nickname.
" She uncapped a pen with a flourish. "Okay.
First question, and I need you to answer honestly, because the county clerk's office is going to ask it with a completely straight face and I need to know how to respond.
Did you, at any point during the last two years, file taxes under a different identity? "
"No."
"Good, because that would have been a whole separate nightmare. Second question. Do you have any documentation at all establishing your identity, or are we starting from absolute zero?"
"Absolute zero. I walked out of that house with the clothes I was wearing and nothing else."
Ivy sighed, long and put-upon, and then grinned anyway, because underneath the exasperation she was, I understood, genuinely thrilled to be handed a problem this strange.
"Right. Absolute zero it is. Good thing I like a challenge.
Diesel, get me every photograph of Cormac that exists in this club's collective phones going back a decade.
Knox, I need you to write a sworn statement.
Josie—" she looked up, gentler now "—I'm going to need you too, eventually.
Marriage certificate, dental records if you've got access, anything with his handwriting on it for comparison.
I know it's a lot to ask you to help build a case that your husband is, in fact, your husband. "
"I'll help," Josie said, quiet, from where she'd been standing near the door, and something in her voice — steady, willing, present — made my chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with the legal mountain in front of us.
"Wonderful." Ivy clapped once, businesslike, already scribbling on her legal pad.
"Marriage certificate, then. I know it's stored somewhere in that house, probably in a box you haven't opened in a while.
Take your time finding it — no rush on my end, the county's not going anywhere, they're famously terrible at urgency.
In the meantime—" she turned back to me, pen tapping thoughtfully against her chin "—I'm going to need a full accounting of every alias, cover name, or false identity you used during the operation, because the last thing we need is some old paper trail contradicting the story we're building for the clerk's office. "
"There weren't many. Two, maybe three, depending how you count."
"I count generously when it comes to bureaucracy, so give me all of them.
" She scrawled something, underlined it twice.
"And Cormac — I want to say this once, plainly, because I don't think anyone's said it to you directly yet, in all the chaos.
I'm glad you're not dead. I know that sounds obvious.
I want it said anyway. This club lost something real when we buried you, and getting it back is worth every ridiculous form the county throws at us. "
"Thank you, Ivy."