When we reached the arbor, she looked up at me with clear eyes.

“What happens after we reach this part, Dad?” “Now,” I told her, “we get to decide where we want to walk next.” It was, I think, the truest wedding that terrace ever hosted — not a vow between two adults, one of whom was lying, but a small, quiet, honest ceremony between a father and the daughter he had almost failed and had chosen, in the end, instead: a walk with no audience, down an aisle that led not to a marriage but simply to the two of us, together, deciding freely where to go next.

She got to finish her walk.

And at the end of it, waiting, was the only person who had ever actually deserved to be at the end of it — her father, who had picked her.