“You stayed,” he replied. “That’s not nothing.”
I rested my forehead briefly against his shoulder. “I hate that it took your name for them to value me.”
Daniel’s grip tightened slightly. “They should’ve valued you all along,” he said. “But now they’ve been forced to see the truth. What they do with that is on them.”
When the wedding wound down near midnight, my parents approached us as we prepared to leave. My mother’s face looked smaller than it had all weekend, the confidence drained out of her.
“Sophia,” she began, voice trembling, “we need to apologize. Truly.”
My father nodded, eyes fixed on the ground. “We assumed… because you lived modestly and didn’t brag… that you weren’t successful. We were wrong.”
“You were wrong about more than that,” I said gently.
My mother’s eyes filled. “We know,” she whispered. “And we want to do better. If you’ll let us.”
I looked at them, really looked. They weren’t suddenly good parents because a famous person entered the room. But they were finally uncomfortable, finally aware of what they’d been doing.