Chapter 13 - THE WEDDING THEY TRIED TO PREVENT
We married in early October.
Not in a ballroom.
Not at some enormous estate.
At the lake cabin.
Grandpa’s lake.
Harvey sat in the front row.
Janice beside him.
Chief Briggs came with his wife after I unexpectedly invited him.
So did the electrician who called the ambulance.
His name was Eric.
For months, I only knew him as “the electrician.”
At the reception, Wyatt raised a glass.
“To Eric, who arrived to repair a breaker and instead repaired my faith in strangers.”
Everyone laughed.
Eric looked mortified.
My scar was visible in every photograph.
I considered covering it.
Then didn’t.
Not because I had reached some perfect state of acceptance.
I simply didn’t want to spend my wedding day worrying about whether makeup stayed in place.
Before walking toward Wyatt, Harvey stopped me.
“Walter would be proud.”
For once, the sentence didn’t make me sad.
“I think so too.”
Wyatt waited near the water.
When he saw me, he smiled exactly the same way he had before the attack.
Maybe that was what my family never understood.
Love doesn’t mean pretending appearances don’t exist.
Wyatt saw the scar.
He saw all of me.
He simply didn’t treat one mark on my face as the total value of the person standing before him.
During our vows, I almost cried.
Not at the romantic part.
At one simple phrase.
“I choose you.”
Choice.
My family had tried to remove choice from everyone.
They wanted to choose Wyatt’s wife.
Choose my value.
Choose which daughter deserved attention.
Choose what I should tolerate to remain part of the family.
Now nobody was choosing for me.
At the reception, Janice gave me a small box.
Inside was a repaired piece of the original crib.
Not restored perfectly.
The break lines were still visible.
“Harvey and I found a woodworker who stabilized it.”
I touched Grandpa’s carving.
Beautiful first granddaughter.
Sadie.
“Thank you.”
Janice smiled.
“We thought you might want it for your home.”
I did.
Wyatt and I hung it near the entrance of our house.
Not as evidence of what Dad destroyed.
As proof that something broken could survive without pretending it had never been broken.
Months later, that idea would become more important than I expected.
Because there was one final decision waiting for me.
May you like
The trust still contained more money than I knew how to imagine.
And I had to decide what kind of legacy it would become after I was gone.
