She mourned him in February. She married someone else in June. And the man she walked toward had been standing beside her for more than a decade.Actress Heather McComb, 49, just got married — and the wedding photos from Missoula, Montana, are nothing short of gorgeous. But given everything that happened earlier this year, the timing has a lot of people doing a double-take.There is more to this story than a headline. It starts decades ago, before “Dawson’s Creek” went on air, and winds its way through a quiet divorce, a 15-year friendship, and one of the most heartfelt tributes an ex-wife has ever written about a former husband.Before Kimberly Brook — the woman Van Der Beek called his soulmate and the mother of his five children — there was Heather McComb.

The two actors got engaged in early 2003 and tied the knot over the Fourth of July weekend that same year in Malibu. It was an intimate outdoor ceremony — Michelle Williams, Busy Philipps, and Soleil Moon Frye were among the guests.It lasted six years. In June 2009, both were 32 when they went their separate ways. His rep kept it brief: the split was “totally amicable.”A divorce settlement filed in Los Angeles in March 2010 filled in the details: Van Der Beek, earning $35,000 a month at the time, agreed to pay McComb — then earning $1,750 monthly — spousal support of $7,750 a month through December 2012.He kept the North Hollywood home, his bank accounts, and all residuals from his work. They had no children together. He moved on, remarried, and built a full, loud, beautiful family life.