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“Is he dangerous?”
“No. Entitled, careless, and foolish, yes. Dangerous, no.”
“Why me?”
Her smile was soft enough to cut with. “Because you understand responsibility.”
“You want me to marry a prisoner?”
I should have walked out.
Instead, I thought of Owen pretending he wasn’t hungry after school.
“I want the first payment before the wedding,” I said.
Celeste smiled. “Of course.”
***
When I told Owen, he stared at me like I’d become someone else.
“You’re getting married?”
“On paper, that’s all.”
“To a man in prison?”
“Of course.”
“Yes.”
“You sold yourself to keep me in school?”
“I did it to keep a roof over our heads.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
His anger softened into something worse.
“I can get a job.”
“You sold yourself to keep me in school?”
“You are finishing school, Owen. That’s what matters.”
“Sadie, please.”
“No. You graduate. You get out. And you become someone no rich woman can price.”
He looked away first.
That’s how I knew he understood.
***
The wedding happened behind scratched glass.
Jonah sat across from me in a beige prison uniform, thin and tired-eyed.
He looked away first.
“You don’t have to pretend I’m a good man,” he said.
“Good, because I’m not that generous.”
I expected anger, coldness, or arrogance.
Instead, he looked ashamed.
“I did take money,” he said. “$18,000 from a restricted foundation account. My trust was frozen after my father fell ill, and I called it borrowing from my future.”
“I’m not that generous.”
“That’s a fancy way to say stealing.”
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
“But I didn’t take the $600,000 they put on me,” he added. “Dean did that.”
“Who’s that?”
“My cousin. He moved the larger funds, forged my name, and let my smaller mistake make me easy to blame.”
“Then why did you let them bury you?”
“That’s a fancy way to say stealing.”
Jonah looked toward the guard.
“Because I already hated myself enough to believe I deserved it.”
So I signed the papers.
So did he.
Just like that, I had a husband and rent money.
***
At first, I performed.
So I signed the papers.
I visited twice a month because Celeste’s checks cleared. I wrote letters that sounded warm enough to be useful and vague enough not to be real.
Jonah always wrote back.
His letters were neat, with sketches in the margins. A coffee cup. A tired waitress. Owen as Captain Algebra after I mentioned his failed math quiz.
At the next visit, Jonah asked, “Did Owen retake the test?”