When she saw the gauze wrapped around my leg, her eyes went red all over again.
"Oliver, I'm so sorry. I raised that ungrateful girl and clearly didn't raise her right, and you're the one who's paid for it."
"And these engagement gifts—we can't keep them. Won't you give Annie another chance?"
I was still puzzling over that when my phone lit up. A voice message from my father.
The room was quiet, and I didn't want it playing out loud, so I switched it to text.
Every line of it carried his warmth, and underneath the warmth, a steadiness that felt like solid ground.
He said he would always respect whatever I decided. He would always have my back, no matter what, and the house would always be there if I ever needed somewhere to fall back to.
The warmth of it settled in my chest. I looked up at Aunt Darlene, my voice steady now.
"Aunt Darlene, you don't owe me anything."
"I just wasn't lucky enough to be your son-in-law."
"If my mother were here, she'd make the same choice my father did."
At the mention of my mother, Darlene went still.
The two of them had been friends since they were girls.
Work had pulled them to opposite ends of the country for years.
Then, by some twist of luck, they'd both married into the same city, and the friendship picked up right where it left off.
The year I started high school, Darlene's husband had an affair.
Darlene came to my mother, broke down, and asked her to come along and catch him in the act.
In the middle of the shoving, something went wrong. He put a knife into my mother, and her kidney ruptured.
She survived the surgery, but she was never the same after that.
She died the year before I finished college.
All these years, Darlene had carried the guilt, and she'd loved me like a son of her own.
Once she learned Annette and I were together, she stood by me, right or wrong, every single time.
In the end she let out a long breath, her eyes tired.
"Oliver, I won't push you."
"But the engagement gifts, I have to return them to you. It's not a small sum of money."
"I just hope your mother won't hold it against me."
She pressed the bank card into my hand.
"Get your rest."
Then she turned and walked out of the room, shooting Annette a hard look on her way.
Once Darlene was gone, Annette came in. Seeing nothing changed in my expression, she took my calm for surrender and made herself patient.
"Yesterday was my fault. From now on I'll always pick up when you call."
"Once you're discharged, we'll go shoot the wedding photos and lock in the venue."
"My mother and your father are getting old. They can't take this kind of strain."
As she spoke, she reached for my hand, and her gaze froze on the bare stretch of my middle finger.
"Where's the ring, Oliver?"
I looked down. There was a pale band of skin where it used to sit.
"Threw it out."
Annette's hand hung in the air, her lips pressing into a flat line.
"Oliver, what exactly do you want from me before you're satisfied?"
I lifted my eyes to her.
"Fire Leigh Delgado."
"No."
The refusal came almost before I'd finished.
"Why not?"
"He's worse at his job than anyone you've fired before him."
I held her eyes and laid out the plain fact of it.
Something uneasy flickered across her face, and her voice picked up heat.
"Oliver, you're thirty years old. Can you stop acting like some sulky college boy?"
"Ten years together, six living under the same roof, every friend and relative we have knows we're getting married, and you have to pick now to throw a fit?"
"If we break up at this point, how am I any different from a divorcée?"
Even with my mind made up, the words still landed wrong, and something inside me dropped.
I couldn't make myself believe that the girl who once cried in my arms the day I told her I loved her was the same person as this face in front of me, flushed and furious at being humiliated.
