“But don’t you dare be a coward a second time.” She looked me in the eye.

“Go find out who Arabella really is.

And once you know the truth, for the first time in your life, make your own choice.”

I have replayed that moment in the driveway more than almost any other, because Isabela, in the wreckage of her own one-day marriage, gave me the thing my own family had withheld my entire life: she told me to choose.

Not what to choose — she pointedly refused to steer me toward her or away from her, refused even to make her own heartbreak my problem.

She simply handed my agency back to me, in a driveway, at night, hours after learning her husband had a secret child, and told me to use it.