On the drive home, Tyler asked, “You had the letter. You were going to tell him. Why didn’t you?”
I watched the streetlights pass. “Because Grandma spent 30 years making sure I never felt like I didn’t belong. I won’t detonate his marriage, his daughters’ world, and his whole understanding of himself—for what? A conversation? Grandma said it was probably cowardice. But I think it was love. And I understand it now better than I did this morning.”
“And if he never knows?” Tyler asked.
“Billy’s already doing one of the most important things a father can do. He’s going to walk me down that aisle. He just doesn’t know why it matters as much as it does.”
We married in October, in a small chapel outside the city, in that 60-year-old ivory silk dress I had altered myself. Billy offered me his arm at the chapel doors, and I took it. Halfway down the aisle, he leaned close and whispered, “I’m so proud of you, Catherine.”
