I looked at my son and understood that I was in an impossible position, the one every parent eventually finds themselves in.

If I pushed, I would become the interfering mother trying to control her son’s marriage, and every warning I gave would only bind him tighter to her, because a person defending someone they love hears an attack on that person as an attack on their own judgment.

He would not believe Verena, secondhand.

He would not believe me, because he could see, correctly, that I had reservations, and he could not yet tell the difference between a mother’s protectiveness and a mother’s alarm.

I did not want to choose his wife.

I want to be very clear about that, because it would be easy to tell this story as though I set out to break up an engagement I disapproved of, and that is not what happened.

If Sabine had been merely unsuitable — too young, too flashy, from a different world — I would have said nothing and learned to love her, because he loved her, and that is the job.

What I could not do was stand by while a man who had spent his whole life protecting people was quietly disassembled by someone who had studied exactly how to use that against him.

I did not need Gabriel to choose the wife I would have chosen.

I needed him to choose with his eyes open.