She wrote it in.
People ask me sometimes about the wedding. The ones who were there. They still talk about it.
“Weren’t you furious?” they ask. “That he did it right there? In the middle of the aisle?”
I was. For about ten seconds.
Then I understood.
My whole life, I’d been the quiet one. The one in the attic. The one who waited for the right moment. And I almost waited too long. If Grandpa had kept quiet, I’d have gotten married, gone on my honeymoon, and let a judge say the truth two weeks later in a room nobody was watching. My mother would have gotten to walk out of that church as the gracious mother of the bride one last time.
Grandpa didn’t let her.
He knew something I was still learning. You can’t be anyone’s regret unless you agree to carry it. And you can’t put it down until somebody says the truth out loud.
