Instead, she smiled all day.
Paul started coming by after shifts. Sometimes he wore the uniform. Sometimes jeans and a faded Hawkeyes hoodie. He was quiet in a way Kate mistook for depth. He asked about her rehearsals. He listened when she talked about wanting to audition in Chicago someday.
“Chicago?” he said once, stirring sugar into his coffee. “That’s a big jump.”
“Maybe.”
“You’re not scared?”
“All the time.”
He smiled. “You don’t seem like it.”
“That’s acting.”
He looked at her for a long second. “No. You seem real.”
No one had ever said it to her that way.
By winter, Paul was bringing her dinner between rehearsals. He waited in the lobby with a paper bag and watched her talk to directors and stage managers with a kind of quiet pride. He told her she reminded him of something the world had forgotten.
Kate believed him because she wanted to.
Maybe that was the first mistake.
Not loving him.
Believing that love and judgment could not live in the same house.
Part 3
They got married three months after the first tulip.
The snow had melted into gray slush along the curbs, and the wind outside the Linn County Courthouse cut through Kate’s thrift-store coat. Paul wore a worn leather jacket and a white shirt he had ironed himself. Kate wore a pale blue dress she had bought from a resale shop and altered by hand the night before.
No music.
No bouquet.
No family packed into pews.
Just two signatures, a judge who had clearly performed hundreds of courthouse weddings, and the faint smell of coffee still clinging to Kate’s sleeves.
Paul said it didn’t make sense to waste money on a wedding.
“We can put that toward a place,” he told her. “Something real.”
Kate nodded quickly because she wanted to be the kind of woman who understood. Practical. Not demanding. Not foolish enough to need flowers or photographs or her father walking her down an aisle.
“Simple is fine,” she said.
Paul squeezed her hand. “You’re not like other women.”
At twenty-two, Kate thought that was a compliment.
After the ceremony, they ate lunch at a diner across the street. Paul ordered a burger and fries. Kate ordered a salad she barely touched because she kept looking at the gold band on her finger.
“Mrs. Dawson,” Paul said softly.
She smiled so hard her cheeks hurt.
He talked about long-term goals. Buying a used car. Saving for a house. Starting a family someday, when the time was right. He made the future sound like something you could build if you just stayed disciplined enough.
Kate liked that.
Her own dreams had always come with risk. Auditions. Rejections. Cheap rooms. Waiting tables between callbacks. Paul’s version of life sounded solid. A foundation poured in concrete.
They rented a one-bedroom apartment near downtown Cedar Rapids, not far from the community theater.
It wasn’t much.
The walls were thin enough that they knew when the upstairs neighbor flushed the toilet. The window in the bedroom didn’t close all the way. The carpet had a stain shaped vaguely like Ohio. But Kate decorated it with thrift-store curtains, a chipped lamp with a yellow shade, and framed playbills from productions she had performed in.
At night, she rehearsed lines softly while Paul dozed on the couch.
Sometimes he smiled without opening his eyes.
“Say that one again,” he’d mumble.
“What?”
“The part where you sound mad but pretty.”
She would laugh and throw a dish towel at him.
In those first months, he seemed gentle. A little possessive, maybe, but in ways she explained away. He liked knowing when rehearsals ended. He didn’t love the male actors who hugged everyone backstage. He frowned if she talked too long about moving somewhere bigger.
But he brought coffee when she had early shifts.
He scraped ice off her windshield.
He held her hand when they walked along the Cedar River, the city lights shaking on the black water.
Kate told herself love was not supposed to be perfect.
Then his mother began to appear in small ways.
Agnes Dawson did not call often, but when she did, Paul’s whole body changed. His shoulders tightened. His voice got flatter. He would walk into another room, but Kate could still hear pieces.
“She’s fine.”
“No, Mom.”
“She works.”
“No, it’s theater stuff.”
One Sunday, Kate asked, “Does your mother not like me?”
Paul looked up from the bills. “She doesn’t know you.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He sighed. “She thinks you’re different.”
“Different how?”
“You know. Small-town. Theater. Big dreams. She worries you’ll get bored.”
Kate tried to smile. “Will you?”
“Will I what?”
“Get bored.”
Paul’s expression softened then, and for a moment she saw the man from the café.
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