Dad was marrying his third wife in a rented hall that still smelled like the last party. I was ten. My stepbrother was six. We had been handed matching shirts and told to smile for pictures we did not ask to be in. When the preacher asked if anyone objected, the room did the usual polite nothing. Then the six-year-old beside me raised his hand as if he were waiting to be called on in class.
Dad laughed the short laugh he used when a child was about to embarrass him. He asked why. My stepbrother said, “Because.” That was all. The guests waited for a joke. It did not come. Dad asked again, sharper. The boy looked at the woman in white, then at Dad, and finished the sentence the way children do when they have been paying attention longer than the adults wanted. “Because you told Mom this was the last time. You said it in the kitchen. I heard you.”
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