He nodded his head and said, “Colleen, he raised you. He deserves to give you away at your wedding. And you shouldn’t feel guilty about it, because it’s the right thing to do.”

I knew my decision absolutely gutted my father. But he was selfless enough as a father to not only respect my decision, but he wanted me to respect it, too.

My father sat in the audience at my wedding and watched another man walk me down the aisle. I knew people were wondering why I didn’t just have both of them walk me down the aisle, but looking back on it, I realize I made the choice out of respect for my mother.

Who I chose to walk me down the aisle wasn’t really about my father and it wasn’t even really about my stepfather. It was about her. I wanted the man who treated her how she deserved to be treated to be given the honor of giving away her daughter.

In the past, I’ve always said I write for entertainment purposes only. I don’t write to educate, persuade, or inform.

This book is different. This was not entertainment for me. It was the most grueling thing I have ever written. At times, I wanted to hit the Delete button and take back the way Ryle had treated Lily. I wanted to rewrite the scenes where she forgave him and I wanted to replace those scenes with a more resilient woman—a character who made all the right decisions at all the right times. But those weren’t the characters I was writing.

That wasn’t the story I was telling.

I wanted to write something realistic to the situation my mother was in—a situation a lot of women find themselves in. I wanted to explore the love between Lily and Ryle so that I would feel what my mother felt when she had to make the decision to leave my father—a man she loved with all her heart.

I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been if my mother had not made the choice she did. She left someone she loved so that her daughters would never think that kind of relationship was okay. She wasn’t rescued by another man—a knight in shining armor. She took the initiative to leave my father on her own, knowing she was about to embark on a completely different kind of struggle with added stress as a single mother. It was important to me that Lily’s character embody this same empowerment. Lily made the ultimate decision to leave Ryle for the sake of their daughter. Even though there was a slight possibility that Ryle could have eventually changed for the better, some risks are never worth taking. Especially when those risks have failed you in the past.

Before I wrote this book, I had a lot of respect for my mother. Now that I’ve finished it and was able to explore a tiny fraction of the pain and struggle she went through to get to where she is today, I only have one thing to say to her.