Let them write what they wanted, the reporters at the gate, the guests trading glances over the roses.

Let them decide I was a schemer, a gold-digger, a young woman who had trapped a rich old man.

I knew what I was.

I was a mother at the end of her rope, doing the one thing left that might save her son, and I had made my peace with the ugly names before I ever walked down that aisle.

There is a freedom in that, in having already accepted the worst the world will say of you, and having decided to do the right thing anyway.