“You need to be yourself,” I told him.

“That’s the trouble,” he answered.

“I’m exactly the man he doesn’t want.”

I remembered how Paige took Ryan’s hand at our dinner table that night.

She didn’t defend herself or complain about her father.

She simply said she had made her choice.

I wished now that I had asked whether choosing Ryan meant losing everyone else.

It is easy to congratulate someone for courage when you are not the person who will be left outside the family home.