My father and I exchanged weather reports like two strangers waiting for the same bus.
Hot out there?
Yep.
Hot here too.
Three years of this.
Then I met James.
A documentary crew came to a construction site in Koreatown where we were doing a seismic evaluation. James was the cinematographer. He asked me to explain what I was doing in a way his editor would understand.
I make sure buildings don’t fall down, I said.
That’s the shortest interview I’ve ever done, he said. He was smiling.
First date: a pho restaurant in Little Saigon. Plastic chairs. I told him about the Disney trip. I don’t know why. I hadn’t told anyone in Los Angeles about it. But James asked about my family and instead of the usual they’re fine, they’re in Oklahoma, I opened my mouth and the Disney trip came out like a splinter working its way to the surface after seventeen years.
He didn’t say that’s terrible. He didn’t say I’m sorry.
He was quiet for a moment, chopsticks still.
Then he said: so you never got the photo album.
Five words. And I knew he understood — not just the anger, which anyone can understand, but the specific shape of the absence. The empty page where the photos should have been.
James proposed in October 2025, on the roof of a building I’d retrofitted two years earlier. He got down on one knee next to a seismic joint I’d designed.
I said yes before he finished the sentence.
Then I did the thing I had promised myself I wouldn’t do.
I sent the invitation.
The bridge failed.
My phone buzzed. Shelby. A photo: my invitation, shredded into confetti on the kitchen counter, the red-checked tablecloth visible underneath. My mother’s coffee mug in the frame, half-full. She had done this during her morning coffee. Routine.
Shelby’s text: Mom says don’t embarrass yourself. Be too nice paper lol.
Lol.
I called my father. He picked up. I could hear the ranch behind him — wind, a gate creaking.
Did you want to come? I asked.
