He did not come. Neither did Tanya. The wedding happened. Uncle Denis walked me down the aisle. He squeezed my hand at the top of the aisle and said, "Your mother would be so proud of you." I started crying before I had taken my first step. Nathan was standing at the altar. He was crying too. It was, I want to say, the most beautiful day of my life — a day in which, against everything I would have predicted eleven years earlier, I was loved well by almost every person in the room, and the person missing was the person who had chosen not to be there. My father did not send a card. My father did not call that night. My

father texted me a week later, through Tanya, saying that "he hoped the wedding was nice and that we should talk eventually." I did not respond. Two months later, he called my uncle Denis. Denis did not pick up. Four months later, he wrote me a letter that acknowledged, for the first time, that he had been wrong. He said he had made "a terrible choice." He said he wanted to repair things. He apologized for Tanya. He apologized for the piano. He said he was in a counseling program. I read the letter three times. I put it in a drawer. I have not responded yet.