I had known Larry for nearly two years.
Every weekday morning, I stopped at the coffee kiosk beside the station and bought two cups.
Mine had cream.
His was always black.
Larry never begged me for money.
Some mornings we talked about the weather.
Other mornings he complained about the pigeons.
Once, he looked down at my office heels and told me they looked like they had been designed by “someone who hated human feet.”
Usually, I stayed for five minutes before rushing to work.
That Tuesday morning was different.
Larry looked terrible.
His skin had a yellow tint, and his hands shook when I passed him his coffee.
I pointed at the cardboard sign.
“What is this?”
He looked down at it.
“The clinic says I probably have about a month.”
For a moment, the noise of traffic and commuters around us seemed to disappear.
“What?”
“Liver failure.”
I sat beside him on the freezing pavement.
“Larry, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t make that face.”
“What face?”
“The face people make when they’re already standing at your funeral.”
Even then, he managed to make me laugh.
But I kept staring at the sign.
“Why marriage?”
Larry looked at his coffee.
“I don’t want to die belonging to nobody.”
“You don’t belong to nobody.”
“That’s a nice thing to say, Sarah.”
He looked toward the street.
“But it’s different when there’s paperwork.”
He explained that without legal family, strangers would eventually deal with his remains.
He didn’t want that.
“I just want one person who can say, ‘He’s mine. I’ll take care of him.’”
I was single.
Larry was dying.
And I had always been better at solving problems than walking away from them.
Two days later, we went to the courthouse.
Larry wore a clean blue shirt somebody at the shelter had given him.
I wore my navy work dress.
When the clerk asked whether we had rings, Larry checked his empty pockets dramatically.
“Knew I forgot something.”
