Not to Gregory’s family.

Not to a hundred and fifty guests.

And not about you.” There was a fierceness in that last part, and not about you, that caught in my throat.

For fifteen years I had thought of myself as the protector, the one who stood between my daughters and every hard thing, and it had not fully occurred to me until that moment that they had grown into people who wanted to protect me right back.

Samantha was not doing this only to defend her own truth, or her sisters’.