The divorce took a year, start to finish. The marriage had taken a week, from proposal to peppery champagne. She shook hands with him the day it was over. He wore the same jeans he was married in — if not the same pair, the same style: black Levis, on the same legs that she'd eyed up and down, a long way up and down, a long time ago, when they met at a barbecue where neither ate meat.

"Potato salad?" she'd offered. "It's chivey."

Chivey became their word. Other couples had a song, they had an herb.

"You're so damn chivey," he'd said later, flicking the bra strap down her shoulder.

"Chive me," she said, her hips sinking back on the bed.

After the wedding, she discovered he liked young tarragon and sweet marjoram too, pale faces a blur through his car window as he sped past his wife, hands leafing over long legs. He branched out: exotic anise and biting clove, dark-skinned vanilla, hard little nutmeg.

She tried to forgive, a marriage should be well-seasoned.

"We vowed for eternity," she told herself. "Sickness, health, spices, all of it."

He still sought the comfort of cinnamon.

Finally, dried up, she accepted tastes change. When they shook hands on the courtroom steps, he leaned into her, just like the first time. "You smell good."

And she did. She'd made a fresh vow, one she could keep. Their marriage lasted six years. Divorce was forever.