And in the middle of page one, on a line, typed:

Transfer on death beneficiary: Chloe Anne Henderson.

I printed it.

There is a woman at that counter called Lurline Beddoe who has worked there since the nineteen-nineties, and she took two sheets off the printer and stamped them and said, “Two dollars.”

Two dollars.

I paid with four quarters and two of the dollar coins the machine in the courthouse basement gives you instead of change, and she put them in a drawer, and I walked out onto the steps and sat down on them in December in a coat.

The ninth of August 2016.