So let me send Trey on his way, and you go tell our guests that I’m coming, and we’ll still have our wedding day, okay?”

Seconds ticked by. Lawrence ground his teeth together, then shook his head. “I don’t like this.”

“I know. I don’t either. But he’ll be gone soon and everything will be fine. I promise.”

Lawrence stalked off, and ushered the gawkers in the doorway back inside.

McKenna waited for the tall wooden doors to close before turning to Trey, who’d wrapped TJ in his suit jacket.

“Your timing sucks,” she said bluntly.

His broad shoulders shifted. “I tried to find you last night. I didn’t want to do this today.”

“When did you get out?”

“Yesterday.”

For a moment there was just silence, and the cold air whistling through the valley. McKenna was so chilled now she wasn’t sure she’d ever feel warm again. “Who told you?”

“Troy. Just before we reached Marietta.” He exhaled. “I wished you’d told me. A letter…just a few lines…”

She said nothing. He was right. It would have been the right thing to tell him. The decent thing. But her relationship with Trey wasn’t easy. Her feelings weren’t simple, nor easily managed, at least, not when it came to him. The only way she’d been able to move on was to do it full stop. Cold turkey.

It’d hurt like hell. She’d suffered, especially as each of his frantic letters arrived, but she’d reached the end of her rope. She had nothing left. Not for him, or them. She barely could keep it together for TJ, and that was the only thing that kept her from falling apart completely.

TJ needed one whole, healthy, available parent.

He needed her to be the whole, healthy, available parent. He depended on her for everything.

And so she stopped reading Trey’s letters. She took down Trey’s photos. She boxed up his extra jackets and boots and things he’d left at the apartment and dropped them off at the Graff Hotel, leaving them for Troy to deal with.

And gradually TJ stopped asked about his dad. They stopped discussing Trey. There was no mention of a dad, or a dad in prison. It was almost as if Trey had never been in the picture.

But seeing TJ and Trey together in the courtyard, McKenna knew she’d gotten it all wrong.