I continued.
Your father believed Douglas was not good enough for you. I did not agree with him, but I allowed his fears to become mine. When Douglas came to the house in 1986, I told him you were engaged. You were not.
He had come carrying a letter. He asked me to give it to you.
I did not.
The paper shook in my hands.
I read the next lines twice.
Your father had received a telephone call from Douglas’s father earlier that week. He said Douglas was preparing to abandon his family and that you were encouraging him. He said Douglas’s mother was ill and that she might harm herself if Douglas left.
I closed my eyes.
My father had died in 2001. For years, I had remembered him as strict, worried, and occasionally impossible, but never as cruel. He had believed every problem could be solved through duty. When I was young, I had mistaken that certainty for wisdom.
