He wasn’t wearing his wedding ring.
“Daddy… where’s Mom?” I asked, the question feeling unfamiliar as it left my lips.
His jaw tightened for just a second. Then he gently adjusted my grip on the rose, like it was fragile, like it mattered more than it should.
“She’s… resting,” he said quietly. “She won’t be yelling tonight. She won’t ruin this for us.”
There was something about the way he said it that didn’t sit right. Too calm. Too measured.
I glanced past him, toward the hallway beyond the doors.
“Where did you go?” I asked.
A small, almost distant smile touched his face.
“To the lake,” he said. “Just like she always said she would when she got mad.”
Everything inside me went still.
He reached for my hand again, gently pulling me toward the dance floor.
“I told you I’d be here,” he said softly. “And I am. Tonight is yours, baby girl.”
But the music, the lights, the laughter—it all started to feel far away.
“Daddy… is Mom okay?” I whispered.
He looked down, and this time the smile didn’t stay.
“She’s not coming back,” he said.
Then, almost too quietly to catch, he added,
“She made me choose.”
The words hung in the air between us.
I felt my grip tighten around the rose, my hands trembling.
The song playing was slow, something about forever—but now it felt wrong, like it didn’t belong in this moment at all.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice barely steady.
He glanced around quickly, like he didn’t want anyone else to hear, then guided me toward a quiet corner near the balloon arch where no one was standing.
“I wasn’t even going to come tonight,” he admitted. “She told me not to. Said I didn’t deserve to see you… not after everything.”
“After what?”
He paused again, longer this time. His eyes were red—not from crying, but from something heavier. Like he hadn’t slept. Like something had been eating at him for days.
“I tried to hold things together for you,” he said softly. “But your mom… she wasn’t the same anymore. She kept pushing, kept threatening. She told me I had to choose. Between her and you. Between living like that… or finally being free.”
My chest tightened.
“So I took her to the lake.”
The words landed hard.
“What happened there?” I asked, my voice small.
“She was yelling the whole drive,” he said. “Saying she’d take you away from me. That she’d make sure I’d never see you again. That she’d disappear and tell everyone I wasn’t fit to be your father.”
He rubbed his face like he was exhausted.
“When we got there, she got out and walked toward the edge. Said she wasn’t afraid to jump if it meant hurting me.”
My heart pounded.
“Did she… jump?”
He didn’t answer right away.
Instead, he reached into his coat and pulled something out.
A small silver locket.
My mom’s.
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