Epilogue Two
NORA
I am so fucked. More fucked than I ever imagined I could be as I sit here in the office of the loan officer. “What do you mean?”
“I’m saying, Nora, that you don’t have enough credit to qualify for the small business loan.”
This crushes me. It crushes every part of me. This is what I’ve wanted my entire life, and I’m so close to getting it. “What is it I have to do in order to qualify?”
“You need more capital, or some land to put up as collateral.”
For most people, that wouldn’t be a problem.
For me, it is. While I hang around with the families from Dark Skies and Grizzly River, I don’t have the type of family they do.
In fact, it’s pretty much been me against the world my whole life.
“What about my truck?” I try again, knowing that my truck is expensive.
“Is it paid off?” he questions.
“No, I still have a year on it.”
The loan officer’s expression doesn’t change, and that somehow makes it worse. He’s not unkind about it. He’s just matter-of-fact, the way people are when they deliver bad news so often it stops feeling like bad news to them.
“Your truck isn’t paid off, so it doesn’t qualify as an asset we can use.” He folds his hands on the desk. “I’m sorry, Nora. The numbers just aren’t there right now.”
The numbers just aren’t there right now.
I’ve been hearing some version of that sentence my whole life.
You’re not quite enough. You don’t quite have what it takes.
Come back when you’ve got more experience behind you.
The problem is, I’ve never had more behind me.
It’s always just been me, standing in front of whatever door I’m trying to get through, with exactly what I came with and nothing else.
I built this dream from nothing. I sketched it out on the back of receipts and napkins and whatever paper I had nearby when the ideas came.
I’ve researched it, and priced it, and planned it down to the last detail.
I know exactly what I want and exactly what it would take to get there.
I am so close I can feel it, and now I’m sitting in this chair watching it slip sideways, and I don’t know how to stop it.
My throat is tight. I will not cry in this office. I refuse.
“Is there anything—” I start.
Someone clears their throat behind me.
I turn around.
Truett is standing just inside the door of the office with his hat in his hand and an expression on his face that is so carefully neutral it immediately tells me he’s been standing there long enough to hear most of what’s been said.
He’s in his good jacket, the dark one, which means he came from somewhere that required looking presentable, and his eyes, when they meet mine, are doing something complicated that I don’t quite have the translation for.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he says in a tone that suggests he is not particularly sorry.
He pulls out the chair beside mine and sits down in it like he’s been expected, setting his hat on his knee and turning his attention to the loan officer with the easy confidence of a man who has never once doubted whether he belonged in a room.
“I happened to overhear some of what y’all were discussing. ”
The loan officer blinks. “Can I help you?”
“Truett Weber.” He extends his hand across the desk, and the loan officer shakes it on reflex, the way people always do with Truett.
There’s something about him that makes people respond before they’ve decided to.
“I guess what I’m confused about,” he continues, settling back in the chair.
“Is why my wife didn’t mention that she has access to my collateral if she needs it. ”
The air goes out of the room and out of my goddamn lungs.
I turn my head and look at him so slowly it feels like it happens over the course of several years.
He is not looking at me. He is looking at the loan officer with a perfectly pleasant expression, like he has said something completely reasonable, like the words that just came out of his mouth are words that have any basis whatsoever in reality.
My wife.
I open my mouth.
Truett puts his hand over mine on the armrest and gives it the gentlest, most imperceptible squeeze, and something in the pressure of it says, Not right now, Nora. I promise, just not right now.
I close my mouth.
The loan officer looks between the two of us. I smile. It probably looks insane. It feels insane.
“Well,” the loan officer says, pulling his keyboard toward him.
“That does change things. If you’re willing to put up collateral from the Weber ranch holdings, we can absolutely run this again.
” He starts typing, and I stare straight ahead at the framed certificate on the wall behind his desk and focus on breathing in and out like a normal person while Truett answers questions beside me in a calm and unhurried voice, like this is all perfectly routine, like he didn’t just walk into a bank and claim a wife he does not actually have.
Fifteen minutes later, I walk out of that office with an approved small business loan for my veterinarian practice.
The sunlight hits me full in the face, and I stand on the sidewalk for exactly two seconds before I turn and hit Truett in the arm hard enough that he actually takes a small step sideways.
“Hey—”
“We are not married,” I say, keeping my voice low because we are on a public street and I have not lost my mind entirely. “I don’t know what that was, but we just committed fraud in a federally regulated financial institution.”
“No, we didn’t.” He’s rubbing his arm, but he’s not even trying to hide the fact that he’s fighting a smile, which is making me want to hit him again.
He turns and points across the street at the courthouse, sitting there solid and unhurried in the morning light.
“Not if we go take care of that problem right now.”
I stare at him.
He looks back at me, and the almost-smile is gone now, replaced by a more serious look. His dark eyes are very direct.
“Truett.” My voice comes out quieter than I mean for it to.
“You’ve been alone your whole life,” he says.
“I know that. You’re not going to let me say I know that, but I know it.
” He takes a step toward me, and his voice is low enough now that it’s just for me, just between the two of us on this sidewalk while the town goes about its morning around us.
“I’m not asking you to need me, Nora. I know better than to ask you that.
I’m just asking you to let me stand next to you while you do everything you were going to do anyway. ”
My chest hurts in a way that has nothing to do with anything bad.
“You walked into that bank,” I say.
“I was in the neighborhood.”
“Truett.”
“I saw your truck out front.” The corner of his mouth moves. “I was going to wait outside. And then I heard you in there, and I…” He stops. Starts again. “I couldn’t stand there while you didn’t get the thing you deserve. Not when I could help you.”
I look at him for a long moment.
Then I look at the courthouse across the street.
“This is not how normal people do this,” I tell him.
“No,” he agrees easily. “It’s not.”
“There are no flowers, no dinner. Hell, Truett, you didn’t even ask.”
“I’m asking now.” He holds out his hand, right there on the sidewalk, plain and simple, palm up. “Nora, come across the street with me.”
I look at his hand. I look at his face. I think about the loan approval in my bag and the dream I’ve been carrying alone for so long, I don’t remember what it’s like not to think about it.
I think about what it might feel like to put some of that weight on someone else.
Not because I can’t carry it. But because someone is offering to carry it with me.
I put my hand in his.
“You’re lucky I don’t have a long drive home to think about this,” I say as we step off the curb.
He laughs and tucks my hand into the crook of his arm, and walks me across the street toward the courthouse like he’s been waiting to do exactly this for longer than either of us is ready to say out loud.
Read Nora and Truett’s marriage of convenience in Hitched.