Neither did the four SUVs, the transaction worth $2.4 billion, or the people who suddenly wanted to be my friends.

They only revealed how poorly my family had understood it.

And when Silas reached for my hand in the quiet garden, there was no one left to impress.

There was simply a choice, made freely, between two people who had finally learned what it meant to stand beside each other.

PART 21

A year after our second ceremony, a letter arrived from a young woman I had never met.

She worked in a warehouse several counties away and had seen an old clip of Brielle laughing outside the courthouse.