My wife left me with our six daughters for a wealthy man. Fifteen years later she texted to say she’d be at our oldest daughter’s wedding — and my daughter told me to let her come, because she had already prepared a special welcome for her.

I am still working that part out. It is not a complaint. But I want it in here, because these accounts always make the father sound like a saint, and I was not a saint. I was a man running a schedule, and I was frequently short-tempered, and I missed things that mattered because I was asleep at eleven in the morning.

Junia is twenty-four now. She got engaged to Micah Ostberg last fall.

When the text came I did what I have done with everything since she was nine: I told her the truth and let her decide.

I said her mother wanted to come.