The homeless man I married drank his coffee black outside my subway stop. After his funeral, his last letter opened with an apology I couldn’t understand and sent me back to the courthouse. There, a clerk opened a record book, found his name on hundreds of pages, and asked which Larry I had married.

“Sarah, I need to apologize before I thank you.”

I read the first line twice.

Larry’s letter had arrived six days after his funeral, in a thick white envelope covered in the shaky handwriting I’d seen on his hospice forms. The postmark was dated the day before he died.

Larry’s letter had arrived six days after his funeral.

I’d smiled when I found it.

I thought Larry had written a goodbye. The man couldn’t accept a coffee without thanking me three times.

Then I read the next sentence.

“Nobody was going to bury me as a John Doe.”

The blood drained from my face. I sat down.

“No.”

The blood drained from my face.

***

Less than a month earlier, Larry had been outside my subway station holding a piece of cardboard across his knees.

MARRY ME. I HAVE ONE MONTH LEFT TO LIVE.

I’d known him for two years.

I HAVE ONE MONTH LEFT TO LIVE.

Every weekday, I bought two coffees from the kiosk beside the station. Mine with cream. His black.

Larry never begged me for anything. Some mornings we discussed the weather. Other mornings he complained about pigeons or told me my office shoes looked designed by “somebody who hated feet.”

Larry never begged me for anything.

I usually stayed five minutes before rushing to work.

That freezing Tuesday, Larry looked terrible.

His skin had a yellowish cast, and his hands trembled when I gave him his coffee.

“What is this?” I asked, pointing at the sign.

“What is this?”

“The clinic gave me about a month.”

The traffic noise seemed to disappear.

“What?”

“Liver failure.”

I sat beside him on the cold concrete.

“Larry, I’m so sorry.”

“The clinic gave me about a month.”

“Don’t make that face.”

“What face?”

“The one people make when they’re already at your funeral.”

Even then, he could make me laugh.

But the sign wasn’t funny.

“Why marriage?”

But the sign wasn’t funny.

His eyes dropped to his coffee.

“I don’t want to die belonging to nobody.”

“You don’t.”

“That’s nice to say, Sarah. It’s different on a form.”

He explained that without legal family, strangers would eventually handle his remains.

“It’s different on a form.”

“I just want somebody who can say, ‘He’s mine. I’ll take him.’”

I was single.

He was dying.

And I had always been better at solving problems than walking away from them.

***

Two days later, we went to the courthouse.

He was dying.

Larry wore a clean blue shirt someone at the shelter had given him. I wore my navy work dress.

When the clerk asked about rings, Larry patted his pockets.

“Knew I forgot something.”

I laughed.

Eleven minutes later, I was his wife.

I wore my navy work dress.

Exactly three weeks after that, I sat beside his bed at the state hospice facility while his breathing slowly stopped.

Now his letter was telling me I’d married him for a reason that wasn’t true.

I’d married him.

***

I forced myself to continue.

“The liver failure was real. The month was real. The lie was why I asked you to marry me.”

I set the letter down for a second, then picked it right back up.

“The lie was why I asked you to marry me.”

“My arrangements were already handled. I knew somebody from hospice or the county would deal with the paperwork. I wasn’t going to disappear without a name.”

I stood so quickly my chair scraped backward.

“What did you do, Larry?”

“I wasn’t going to disappear without a name.”

There was nowhere for the anger to go.

He was dead.

I couldn’t call him.

Couldn’t demand an explanation.

Couldn’t even make him sit through the expression on my face.

I couldn’t call him.

I kept reading.

“If I gave you a problem you could solve, I knew you’d solve it.”

That was the line that hurt.

Because he was right.

I had spent two years offering Larry things.

Coffee.

Food.

Socks.

Phone numbers for shelters.

That was the line that hurt.

Once, when temperatures dropped below freezing, I’d spent half my lunch break calling around for an available bed.

Larry had thanked me every time.

I’d never considered that he might have learned exactly how to ask me for something.

Larry had thanked me every time.

At the bottom of the page he’d written:

“Before you decide what kind of jerk I was, go back to the courthouse where we got married. Ask for Margaret. Tell her you’re my wife.”

I nearly threw the letter away.

“Tell her you’re my wife.”

Instead, an hour later, I was standing in the courthouse lobby.

Couples filled the plastic chairs.

A woman in a white jumpsuit fixed her lipstick while her fiancé held her bouquet. A toddler crawled beneath two chairs while his father tried to catch him.

I was standing in the courthouse.

Three weeks earlier, Larry and I had sat in that same row.