“What Dad said.”

I froze.

“How?”

“Karen guessed something was wrong. Dad admitted it.”

“It was your wedding week.”

“So?”

“I didn’t want to make you manage us.”

She frowned.

“You’re allowed to have feelings during my wedding.”

“Noted.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

She squeezed my fingers.

“He doesn’t get to decide what you are to me.”

“I know that now.”

“You knew it before.”

“I hoped it.”

Hannah stopped dancing.

“Jenna.”

“Yes?”

“You raised me too.”

My throat closed.

“Not alone.”

“I know.”

“Your dad did most of the early years.”

“I know.”

“Your mother—”

“I know.”

She smiled.

“This isn’t a subtraction problem.”

That sentence stayed with me.

For years, all of us had treated blended-family love as though it were subtraction.

Honor a stepmother, and something is taken from the mother.

Love the woman who helped raise you, and somehow you betray the woman who died.

Acknowledge a second wife, and a photograph loses value.

Hannah understood what the adults had missed.

Love adds.

It doesn’t require replacement.

—

After midnight, Hannah and Ethan left beneath sparklers.

Greg and I drove home in thoughtful silence.

The pale blue rehearsal dress still hung over the dining chair.

The steamer sat where I had left it four days earlier.

Greg stared at it.

“I was so sure I was right.”

“That happens to you.”

He almost smiled.

“Fair.”

He picked up the steamer.

“Where does this go?”

“Laundry closet.”

He put it away.

A small repair.

Very Greg.

The next morning, an envelope sat beside my breakfast plate.

“What’s that?”

“A terrible attempt at communication.”

Inside was a quick photograph someone had sent him from the wedding.

Hannah hugging me at table four.

The white rose above my heart.

On the back Greg had written:

I will never again confuse your quietness with your place in this family.

I looked at him.