Meredith, to my knowledge, has never spoken to me since. Her mother has never spoken to Tish since, which has been, for my wife, a cost I did not fully anticipate when I made the decision to go. Paige still speaks to us, carefully. Ben sent me a bottle of bourbon at Christmas, with a card that said, "For saving my daughter's life. She will get there. Give her time." Hunter, as I mentioned, was never found — or was found, three months later, in Texas, where he had started dating a new woman under a slightly different name, and where my call to a local police department (made because Roxanne had finally filed for divorce

and needed to serve him) resulted in him being arrested on bigamy-related charges in Nevada. He is, last I heard, in a plea-bargain process. Roxanne got her divorce. She sent me a card in December. It said, "I don't think you saved me. I'm past the point where I think anyone saved me. But you believed me, and you used what I gave you, and you stopped another woman from standing where I stood. I will never forget that." I put the card in my desk drawer. I go back to it, sometimes, when I feel like the whole thing was the wrong call. So tell me — was standing up in a church I wasn't invited to the right thing to do, or did I humiliate a bride I didn't know to solve a problem that wasn't mine?

* Story inspired by real-life situations. Names and details have been changed for privacy.