We dated for fourteen months before he proposed. Fourteen months of weekends in good hotels, of dinners where he always knew the sommelier, of conversations that felt like finally being understood. I was thirty-four and cautious by nature. I told myself I had taken my time. I had been thorough. I had been wrong.
The wedding was small. Gary said he wasn’t close to his family—a father who drank, a mother who left early, a sister somewhere in Ontario he’d lost touch with. I didn’t push. Everyone has things in their past they’d rather not explain. I respected the closed doors. Another mistake I would regret later.