The very nice man on the eighteenth floor takes my appointment confirmation, which isn’t for two weeks yet, and issues me a number. When it’s finally called, I pass my application and driver’s license beneath the agent’s window. She smiles at my story about our elopement to Amsterdam as Luka beams and puts his arm around me.

“And your birth certificate?” she says. I look at Luka. He slides me a page from the envelope. It’s a folded map of Greenville, Maine. I look blankly from the map to him. He shoves it into my hand.

“Here,” I say, not even attempting to smile as I hand it to the woman, fingers tapping a nervous SOS against the countertop.

My name is Emily Porter and I was born wherever you were, lady.

She takes the map, stares at it for a long moment, looks up at me. My heart stops.

“Well, what a coincidence! I’m from Ogallala, Nebraska, too!”

Luka and I make inane comments about fate, love, the size of the world.

“I’m just . . . trying to find your date of birth,” she says, finger scanning the map.

I point to Mooseless Lake but fumble for a date. I search desperately and then see the digital display behind her.

“Well, happy birthday!” she exhales with a laugh.

“Yup. Happy birthday to me.” I smile stupidly. “I’ve got my honey and my birthday cake, all together.”

Luka gives me a weird look as the lady returns my “documents” and tells us to come back at one o’clock.

We have enough time to buy a change of clothes, backpacks, sandwiches. We check in to a nearby motel long enough to take turns in the shower and change. The spray of hot water in that chipped and scuff-marked bathroom is the most luxurious thing I can remember. And I will never take brushing my teeth for granted again. I even have time for a half-hour nap, the experience at the passport agency having drained the last of my reserves. When I wake, Luka’s gotten me some ice for my lip, which is still a little swollen but already beginning to heal.

By the time we return at one, I wonder if there’ll be police waiting to detain me. Instead, I’m handed a spanking new passport.

Less than an hour later, we’re back on the L to O’Hare. And for the first time since we left Lafayette, Luka, in a new black sweater, face half-obscured by a hat, looks nervous.

“Keep your head down and phone on,” he says as we arrive, and then strides out of the train ahead of me.

I make my way to ticketing, through security, and catch a glimpse of him only once before reaching the gate. I sequester myself near the window and keep an eye out. Ten minutes before boarding I start to panic.