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“Were you.”

“It was so fast.”

“It was.”

If you agree with people in this situation they have to keep going without help.

They keep going.

“Was it a big thing? Nobody saw anything.”

“It was a courthouse.”

“Just the two of you?”

“And my daughter.”

The second one looks at the first one over the rim of her cup.

“My husband says they’re buying him out in the summer.”

“Does he.”

“He says it wouldn’t be the first time somebody had a bad year and landed on their feet.”

I let that one go past me. I have had worse said about me by people with more information.

Then she says the other thing.

“It’s sad, though. Watching him out there now. He was really something.”

“He asked me to marry him.”

Both of them stop.

“I said no.”

The hallway does not go quiet. Somebody’s younger child is being walked toward the water fountain and the urn is still running.

“Eight days later I asked him, and he said yes. You may do whatever arithmetic you like with that.”

That was mine and now it is theirs.

The first one begins to arrange her face.

“Do not.”

She stops.

I pick up my bag and turn to the one with the lanyard.

“You have said what you came to say. You can think whatever you like about me. I do not care either way.

“You are not going to talk about him.”

She starts to say that she only meant.

“I know what you meant.”