Grandpa DB’s voice resonated in my head, like it so often did. Jesus, Aiden. You’re the oldest. If your brothers saw you out here crying, what do you think they’d do? Hold yourself together.

And Dad had been working all the time. When he hadn’t been working, he’d been out having a good time. Getting lost in success and women. He hadn’t cared about how any of us were feeling, how we were dealing with Mama’s death.

Would I like to tell my brothers about Kate? About how I’d met her and what I thought about this wedding? Sure. And it’d go something like, Look, there’s this girl. She’s lovely in every way. She grew up in a trailer park, so I took her to places I don’t give a shit about but impressed the hell out of her so that when I popped the question weeks after asking her out, she’d say yes. Take notes. You’ll all be turning twenty-nine soon enough.

“My marriage, my business. My money, my business.” My business had been serving this company. My work was in the public eye, fodder for the media, my coworkers, Grams, and my brothers. Kate was my business and I wasn’t letting anyone else in it.

“You let your grams make it her business.”

I scoffed. “Not even Grams can force me to marry.” Force? No. Badger? Maybe, but I understood all her one hundred million reasons. “Kate’s a nice girl. What are you complaining about?”

“Exactly. She’s a nice girl. How do you think she’ll feel to know you’re not with her because you love her?”

This lecture was rich coming from my father. He chewed up nice girls and spit them out without so much as a backward glance. He didn’t know me, but he assumed I didn’t love her? He hadn’t even bothered to ask.

If he had, I wouldn’t have told him anyway. He’d lost his chance to be involved in my private life. “Women are a means to help us get what we want. Isn’t that what you’ve always taught us?”

His recoil at my words was satisfying. “I loved your mother, and when she died—”