He started talking and I let him.
Not because I was ready to listen. Because I had driven two hours and sat in this chair and I had promised myself I would hear him out before I said anything and I was going to keep that promise even if it killed me.
"The Carver family," he began.
I said nothing.
"Gerald Carver and I have known each other for thirty years. Business, property, the kind of relationship that builds over decades. When you were nineteen he came to me with a proposal. His son was twenty one. Already running parts of the family business. Gerald believed in building alliances through families."
"He believed in selling women," I said.
My father looked at me.
"It wasn't—"
"You sat in this chair," I said, "and you told me I was going to marry a man I had never met. You didn't
