At My Own Wedding, My Dad Took The Microphone, Said: “Raise Your Glass To The Daughter Who Finally Found Someone Desperate Enough To Marry Her.” People Laughed. My Fiancé Didn’t. He Opened A Video On The Projector And Said: “Let’s Talk About What You Did Instead”

Here’s what never made sense to me. My grandparents—my mother’s parents—passed away in 2012, the year before I started college. They weren’t wealthy, but they were careful. They saved. And according to my Aunt Helen, my mother’s younger sister, they left me $47,000 specifically for my education.

“Your grandparents wanted to make sure you could go to any school you wanted,” Aunt Helen told me once when I was nineteen and drowning in loan applications. “They set up a fund just for you.”

When I asked my father about it, he barely looked up from his newspaper.

“That money wasn’t enough,” he said. “I had to use it for other family expenses. You understand?”

I didn’t understand. But I was eighteen, and I’d been trained my whole life not to question him. So I nodded, signed the loan papers, and spent the next decade wondering why I was the only Foster child who had to pay for her own education.

I never saw the will. I never asked for documentation. I never pushed.

Because in the Foster family, you don’t question Richard. You don’t ask for receipts. You accept what he tells you, and you’re grateful for it.

It wasn’t until eight years later, three months before my wedding, that I finally learned the truth about where that $47,000 actually went.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

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