Two months later, Thatcher and my cousin Sloane—my father’s niece—announced their engagement.
They didn’t even have the decency to tell me about it privately.
They told me at my Aunt Denise’s backyard barbecue.
I only showed up because I refused to hide in my house forever.
Thatcher stood beside the much younger Sloane like he’d won some kind of prize. She held out her hand, flashing a diamond that looked way bigger than what was practical.
“We didn’t plan for it to happen like this,” she told a group of relatives. “But when it’s right, it’s right.”
Our family was split right down the middle. Some were shocked, but most just shrugged and said, “The heart wants what it wants.”
I wanted to scream that hearts shouldn’t want married men with newborn twins.
But I was shattered.
However, I didn’t collapse in public. I saved that for the shower at home, where no one could hear me.
