There was no warmth in his voice.
Tristan leaned closer to me.
“Jess, who is he?”
I glanced at him.
“This is Richard.”
That did not help.
Tristan looked even more confused.
Richard gave him a small smile and extended his hand.
“You must be Tristan.”
Tristan shook it.
“Yes, sir.”
Richard nodded.
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you, but I’m still trying to understand what’s happening.”
“I imagine you are.”
Linda finally stepped forward.
“What are you doing here?”
Richard looked around the garden.
“I own the place.”
Her face changed.
That was the moment I knew she understood.
The estate did not belong to some distant acquaintance.
It belonged to the man she had spent years pretending did not exist.
Richard was Tristan’s grandfather.
Linda’s father.
Tristan turned toward his mother.
“Grandfather?”
Linda’s mouth tightened.
“This is not the time.”
Richard raised an eyebrow.
“I think it’s exactly the time.”
Tristan looked at me again.
“You knew?”
“Not for very long.”
That part was true.
I had learned about Richard six months earlier.
Linda never talked about him.
Whenever Tristan asked about his mother’s side of the family, she changed the subject or said they were not close.
For years, Tristan accepted that.
Then we started planning the wedding.
One night, while sorting through an old box of family photographs at Linda’s house, I found a picture of Tristan as a toddler.
He was sitting on the shoulders of a smiling man I had never seen.
On the back, someone had written, “Tristan and Grandpa Richard, summer 1996.”
I asked Linda about it.
She snatched the photograph from my hand.
“He isn’t part of our lives.”
That was all she said.
Later, I asked Tristan.
He barely remembered Richard.
He only knew there had been some family argument when he was young.
I should have left it there.
But I didn’t.
Part of planning a wedding means realizing how many people have disappeared from a family’s story.
Sometimes there is a good reason.
Sometimes there is only pride.
