The room blurred.
“Why you’re marrying me?” I repeated.
Julian lowered his eyes, and for the first time since I had known him, shame crossed his face.
“Because of your mother,” he said.
My father made a sound like the name alone had wounded him.
Julian continued. “Thirty years ago, your mother was engaged to me.”
The guests gasped, but I barely heard them.
“No,” I said. “My mother left us.”
Dad turned toward me, pain filling his eyes.
“That’s what I told you because you were too young to carry the truth.”
Julian reached into his jacket and removed a folded letter, yellowed at the edges.
“She didn’t leave because she stopped loving you,” he said. “She left because she was running from something she had done—and from something I had done with her.”
