"I know."
"Your parents knew."
"Yes."
"Your sister knew."
"Yes."
"Your friends?"
"Some."
I actually laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because the scale of the omission had become absurd.
"I've had Christmas with your family eleven times."
Amy lowered her eyes.
"I know."
"Your mother talks about everything."
"I know."
"She once spent forty-five minutes telling me about the time you got food poisoning at sixteen."
Amy almost smiled through her tears.
"That sounds like her."
"But somehow nobody ever mentioned you nearly marrying somebody?"
"I asked them not to."
That hurt more than I expected.
"You asked them?"
"Yes."
"So this wasn't something everybody accidentally forgot."
"No."
"You deliberately made sure I wouldn't know."
She closed her eyes.
"Yes."
I pulled my hand away.
For the first time that night, anger arrived.
Not explosive anger.
Not shouting.
Something quieter.
A feeling of suddenly standing outside my own marriage, looking through the window at a story that had been edited before I received it.
"Why?"
Amy wiped her face.
"Because it ended badly."
"Badly how?"
"I ended it three weeks before the wedding."
I stared at her.
"Three weeks?"
She nodded.
"What happened?"
"I panicked."
"About marrying him?"
"About everything."
She looked toward the window.
"I was twenty-four."
That surprised me.
Amy rarely spoke of herself as uncertain at that age. Whenever we discussed our twenties, she made them sound boring. College. First job. Moving apartments. Learning to be an adult.
Not a wedding collapsing three weeks before it happened.
"Peter and I met in college," she said.
"He was a year older. Very confident. Very organized. His family had money. Not ridiculous money, but enough that everything in their life seemed already arranged."
I listened.
"They liked me at first."
"At first?"
"As long as I was Peter's girlfriend."
She took another sip of wine.
I reached over and moved the glass slightly away.
She looked at me.
"You've had enough."
Normally that might have started an argument.
Instead, she nodded.
"You're right."
She pushed it away.
"What changed when you got engaged?" I asked.
"Everything became serious."
"In what way?"
Amy took a long breath.
"Where we'd live. What kind of house we'd buy. When we'd have children. How many children we'd have."
"Normal engagement stuff."
"Yes."
She hesitated.
"But there was never any question about what I wanted."
I frowned.
"What do you mean?"
"Peter's mother would say things like, 'You'll probably want to leave your job once the babies come.'"
"Did you?"
"No."
"Did Peter?"
"He said we'd figure it out."
Amy smiled bitterly.
"Which usually meant his mother's plan stayed the plan."
I began understanding.
"Was his family controlling?"
"Not in the obvious way."
She rubbed her thumb again.
"They were polite."
That sentence carried more weight than it should have.
"They never ordered me around. They suggested."
"What kind of suggestions?"
"How I should dress for family events."
I raised an eyebrow.
"Seriously?"
"Peter's mother thought my clothes were too casual."
"They are casual."
Amy looked at me.
"Daniel."
"Sorry."
She almost laughed.
Then continued.