I married a stranger from a hospital waiting room so he wouldn’t d*e alone — after our one-week marriage, his lawyer handed me his backpack, saying, “He wanted you to know the truth.”

I knew how strange the request was.

I said yes anyway, and I’ve been asked why perhaps forty times since, and the honest answer is not noble.

I said yes because of a nurse I never met.

Because somebody had done a last thing for my mother and I couldn’t repay her, and here was a man asking me to do a last thing for him, and it was the closest I was ever going to get to squaring an account that can’t be squared.

Still, two days later, a hospital chaplain married us.

I wore a yellow sweater.

We didn’t have a wedding ring, so Alden slipped a soda can pull tab onto my finger instead.

He had one in his pocket.

I thought that was chance.

He put one on his own finger too, and he looked at both our hands for a long moment, and he said something I didn’t understand and didn’t ask about, because he was tired and the chaplain was still in the room.