Callum returned carrying a small sewing kit in one hand and a blue folder in the other. He walked straight to me, knelt beside my train, and began carefully cutting away every tiny suitcase Gwendolyn had sewn onto it. Nobody spoke. When he reached the largest one labeled “Poppy,” he removed it, stood, and handed it back to his mother. “My daughter is not baggage,” he said. “And neither is the woman I’m marrying.”
Then he opened the blue folder. Inside were documents he had been preparing with a family-law attorney to begin the process of becoming Poppy’s legal father, if she and I wanted that and the legal requirements could be satisfied. He had planned to tell us privately after the wedding. Instead, he looked toward Poppy and said, “I already chose both of you a long time ago.”
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