LEROY TOTTERING had just returned home from his heating and air-conditioning shop when the invitation arrived. Puzzled by the heavy white paper and elaborate scroll print, he shoved the rest of his mail aside and squinted to make out the return address, thinking he must have gotten his neighbor’s mail by mistake.
’But the envelope was clearly addressed to him. Hmm…He didn’t know anyone who was getting married.
Relinquishing his easy chair and the TV remote lying in his lap, LeRoy searched the kitchen counter for his reading glasses. Finding them beneath a section of newspaper, he slid them on and tore open the seal. As he pulled the invitation from its envelope, a picture fell out and fluttered to the ground.
Bending down to retrieve it from the worn shag carpet, LeRoy gazed at the pink and wrinkled face of a newborn. On the back was written, “Alexa Lauren, April 19, 7 lbs. 2 oz.”
Whose little girl was this?
He went back to the wedding invitation, which also sported a picture, and stared down at his daughter Jenna. She’d been a skinny little girl, but she’d turned into one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. Next to her stood the man he’d met at the Victoriana, both of them smiling as though they’d found heaven.
“Well, she deserves it. It’s not as if I did anything to make her life any easier,” LeRoy muttered. There was no one around to hear him. Now that all the kids were gone, he lived alone with only his memories and his regrets to keep him company.
Removing a delicate sheet of tissue paper, he studied the inside of the card. In the formal manner of a wedding invitation, Adam Durham and Jenna Livingston requested the pleasure of his presence at a wedding reception to be held in their honor three weeks from Saturday, the weekend after the Fourth of July, at the Victoriana. But LeRoy had a hard time believing they really wanted him to come—until he read the neat handwriting at the bottom.
Dear Father,
May the sorrows of the past be lost in the happiness of the future. Please come and meet your new granddaughter.
Jenna
And though LeRoy hadn’t shed a tear since he was a boy, he cried like a baby.
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