Callum took a small pair of scissors from the pastor’s desk drawer and knelt behind me. He cut every plush suitcase off my train, one at a time, except the last one. He handed that one to Poppy and asked whether she would keep it, because in this family, he said, we carry each other. Poppy hugged it to her chest. Then he stood, took my hand, and asked the pastor to begin again from the top. Gwendolyn left before the vows. Nobody stopped her, and nobody followed.

She came to our door in March, alone, holding a jar of homemade jam and a letter. She admitted she had been ashamed of herself for thirty years, that she had spent her whole marriage feeling like a woman who arrived with something to apologize for, and that she had tried to pass that shame onto me. The adoption was finalized in May. Poppy now keeps both suitcases on her bookshelf, the tiny plush one and the scuffed brown one, side by side. Nobody who loves you counts what you arrive with. They simply open the door and carry it inside with you, as if it had always belonged there.