My parents tossed my wedding invitation straight into the trash and told me not to embarrass myself, but the morning they saw me walking alone down the aisle at a $40 million Malibu estate, with cameras catching every second, they finally understood the daughter they treated like an afterthought had built a life too big for them to ignore.

I looked at the bowl she had driven forty-five minutes from Torrance to serve me. At the table she had set because I couldn’t set it myself.

The math was simple. Even without my language, I could do this math.

After lunch, she pulled out a photo album. Burgundy cover, slightly bent at the corners. Page after page of the Park family — James at five in a tiny tuxedo, Mrs. Park at his college graduation holding a bouquet almost bigger than she was. A lifetime of recorded moments.

Then she turned to a page near the back.

There I was.

A Fourth of July barbecue. I was standing by the grill, holding corn on the cob, laughing at something with my head tilted back. I hadn’t known anyone was taking a picture. I didn’t know I was being recorded.

But there I was, in someone’s family album, between James’s cousin’s graduation photo and his brother’s engagement dinner.

I had been in a family this whole time. I just hadn’t recognized it because it didn’t look like the one I’d been trying to get back into.

Mrs. Park closed the album.

You belong in this book, Harper. You have for a long time.