Being difficult meant asking, at fifteen, why Grandpa’s letters had stopped coming.
Being difficult meant becoming a forensic accountant instead of marrying someone rich and staying quietly grateful for whatever I was given.
My fiancé, Daniel, had been standing by the window. He wasn’t supposed to be in the bridal suite at all. He’d only come in for two minutes to give me a note he’d written, the old-fashioned kind, folded into a tiny square. Now he stepped forward. I could see the anger under his face, held down hard, the way he holds things down.
I put my hand on his sleeve.
“Don’t,” I whispered. “Not yet.”
Mom laughed softly. “Still dramatic. Even today.”
Then the door opened.
My grandfather walked in slowly, leaning on his black cane.
His white hair was combed neatly back. His navy suit was older than either of my sisters’ marriages, and somehow cleaner than my parents’ consciences. He was eighty-one years old. He’d had a stroke twelve years earlier, and his left foot still dragged a little when he got tired.
