The judge said some words.

We signed some papers.

It took less time than renewing a driver’s license, this thing that rearranged both of our lives.

And then we went home — to our home, his and mine — and I made his favorite dinner to mark the occasion, and I thought, naively, that the hard part was behind us.

I thought the story was over, that we had reached the happy ending, that from here it was simply a matter of two people learning to be a family.

I had reached, I believed, the happy ending — the part of the story where the music swells and the credits roll and everyone understands that the hard road is behind them.