15-05-2021-052358It-Ends-with-Us

I knew my decision absolutely gutted my father. But he was selfless
enough as a father to not only respect my decision, but he wanted me
to respect it, too.
My father sat in the audience at my wedding and watched another
man walk me down the aisle. I knew people were wondering why I
didn’t just have both of them walk me down the aisle, but looking
back on it, I realize I made the choice out of respect for my mother.
Who I chose to walk me down the aisle wasn’t really about my
father and it wasn’t even really about my stepfather. It was about her. I
wanted the man who treated her how she deserved to be treated to be
given the honor of giving away her daughter.
In the past, I’ve always said I write for entertainment purposes only.
I don’t write to educate, persuade, or inform.
This book is different. This was not entertainment for me. It was
the most grueling thing I have ever written. At times, I wanted to hit
the Delete button and take back the way Ryle had treated Lily. I
wanted to rewrite the scenes where she forgave him and I wanted to
replace those scenes with a more resilient woman—a character who
made all the right decisions at all the right times. But those weren’t
the characters I was writing.
That wasn’t the story I was telling.
I wanted to write something realistic to the situation my mother
was in—a situation a lot of women find themselves in. I wanted to
explore the love between Lily and Ryle so that I would feel what my
mother felt when she had to make the decision to leave my father—a
man she loved with all her heart.
I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been if my
mother had not made the choice she did. She left someone she loved
so that her daughters would never think that kind of relationship was
okay. She wasn’t rescued by another man—a knight in shining armor.
She took the initiative to leave my father on her own, knowing she was
about to embark on a completely different kind of struggle with
added stress as a single mother. It was important to me that Lily’s
character embody this same empowerment. Lily made the ultimate
decision to leave Ryle for the sake of their daughter. Even though
there was a slight possibility that Ryle could have eventually changed