Dad shook his head. “I won’t stand in a room and pretend I approve.”
“I’m not asking you to approve. I’m asking you to show up,” I pleaded.
“Please tell me you’ll come to the wedding.”
Neither of them answered. I left before dessert.
It broke my heart, but I wasn’t willing to give up the man I loved just to satisfy them. I was done being a pushover.
The wedding was small, but we were surrounded by people who genuinely supported us. Andrew’s parents cried through the whole ceremony, which was sweet until his dad started hiccuping and couldn’t stop, and then it was just funny!
I left before dessert.
My friend Genevieve walked me down a short aisle in a garden that smelled of cut grass and someone’s overambitious lavender bush. Two chairs sat empty in the front row where my parents were supposed to be.
I didn’t look at them. Not once.
Andrew squeezed my hand at the altar and whispered, “You’re stuck with me now.”
“Good,” I whispered back.
I didn’t look at them.
Later, during the toasts, my new husband tried to open a champagne bottle and sprayed half of it on his own shirt! Everyone lost it! Even I did!
It was, empty chairs and all, one of the happiest days of my life.
The eight months after that were quieter than I expected. My mom texted once about a cousin’s baby. My dad didn’t text at all.
I told Andrew that I was fine. I told myself I was fine. I wasn’t really fine, but I was building something that mattered more than being fine.
Everyone lost it!
However, losing that relationship hurt more than I admitted, but they’d made their choice, and I knew I couldn’t change it.
Then, one Friday evening, someone knocked on our door.
I opened it. I was shocked! My dad was standing there in his good coat, his shoulders set the way they always were before a difficult meeting.
“Dad?”
I hadn’t seen him since before the wedding, and his serious expression immediately worried me.
I knew I couldn’t change it.
Dad didn’t smile. He didn’t even say hello, just said my name as if I was someone else and not his daughter.
“Can I come in?”
Before I could answer or even ask why he’d come, Andrew stepped out of the kitchen into the hallway, a dishtowel over his shoulder and a spoon still in his hand. He stopped when he saw who it was.
Dad looked at my husband. Not for a second, not for two. For long enough that my throat started to close.
“Can I come in?”
Then my dad’s expression hardened into something I hadn’t seen since the night I told them about the ring.
“Roman,” Andrew said carefully. “Hello.”
My dad didn’t answer him. He turned to me instead, and the words came out flat and terrible.
“Does my daughter know what you did to that family?”
For a moment, I couldn’t hear anything except the quiet hum in my ears.
The words came out flat and terrible.
“What?” I managed to squeak out.
“Ask him,” my dad said. “Ask your husband about Isaac and Amira.”
Andrew’s face went still in a way I’d never seen before. Not guilty. Something else. Something I couldn’t read.
And for the first time since I’d said “yes” to him, my stomach turned cold.
I quickly pulled my dad inside and shut the door harder than I meant to.
“Ask your husband about Isaac and Amira.”
“Start talking. Right now.”
With a satisfied flourish, Dad set a folder on our living room table as if it were evidence in a courtroom.
“I hired someone. Months ago. Right after the wedding.”
“You did what?!” I responded without thinking.
“I needed to know who my daughter married,” he said. “And I found something.”
Andrew stood very still in the hallway, arms loose at his sides. He didn’t look guilty. He looked tired.
“I hired someone.”
“There’s an elderly couple,” Dad went on. “Isaac and Amira. They are longtime customers at that restaurant where your husband works. Andrew has been financially involved with them for years, Natalie. There’s a trust they created, and his name is on it. Your husband isn’t a poor waiter; he’s managed to con an old couple out of their money.”
My throat went dry.
“Andrew?” I said, turning to him for confirmation.
“I know them,” my husband said quietly and without hesitation. “I know them very well. But your dad has the story completely backward.”
“Andrew has been financially involved with them for years.”
Feeling challenged, Dad slid a printout across the table.
“Backward, you say? These are public trust filings. Andrew’s name is right here as a beneficiary.”
I looked down at the paper. Then at my husband. Then at the paper again.
Something old and small inside me whispered, “What if they were right all along?”
I hated that voice. I’d spent years silencing it.
“Andrew’s name is right here as a beneficiary.”
“Why didn’t you ever mention them?” I asked, feeling as though the rug had just been pulled out from under me. My voice came out sharper than I wanted. “In all these years we’ve been together, Andrew. Not once.”
My husband’s face fell in a way I felt in my ribs.
“Because it wasn’t a story I told. It was just a part of my life.”
“That’s convenient,” my dad said.
“Dad, stop.”
“Natalie, look at the filings.”
“I said stop!”
