My parents tossed my wedding invitation straight into the trash and told me not to embarrass myself, but the morning they saw me walking alone down the aisle at a $40 million Malibu estate, with cameras catching every second, they finally understood the daughter they treated like an afterthought had built a life too big for them to ignore.

When the dress was on, Mrs. Park reached into her purse and pulled out a silk pouch. Inside, a silver hairpin shaped like a crane with wings extended.

My mother gave this to me at Incheon Airport the day I left Korea. She had said I was dead to her. But she pressed this into my hand at the last moment and said, come back.

She looked at me.

I want you to wear it today.

I bent my head. She slid the pin into my hair above my left ear, her fingers lingering, adjusting, making sure it was secure the way a mother checks that everything is in place before she lets go.

There.

Then, in a voice that almost cracked but did not, because she was Eunice Park:

Not yet. Mascara.

At ten-thirty, I stood at the far end of a stone path along the cliff’s edge.

A wooden arch wrapped in Oklahoma wildflowers — Indian blanket, black-eyed Susan, coneflower. The flowers I used to pick on the side of the county road when I was eight, walking home from the bus stop because nobody was coming to get me. I had wanted them because they were mine. Not Lorraine’s, not Shelby’s, not Bartlesville’s. Mine.

Eighty-five people sat in white folding chairs on a cliff above the Pacific.