Dear April,
I’m so glad that you invited us to the wedding and that we were able to come. It was one of the most beautiful weddings I’ve ever attended.
You had so much to be proud about that day. Chucky. What a fine, witty, handsome young man he has grown up to be, so much like his mother and father.
You have even more reason to be proud of Rosemarie. You had faith in her when everyone else had written her off as an insufferable brat Now she’s so sweet and gentle. And so, so beautiful.
“I haven’t had one of those terrible temper tantrums in years, Mrs. Cleary,” she says to me. “I know you hated them. So I thought I’d tell you I gave them up. And not just for Lent.”
“I sometimes thought, dear, that you did them just to make me mad.”
She kissed me and said, “You know me too well, Mrs. Cleary. Don’t tell my husband, you know, that cute redhead next to me, any more of my secrets.”
I saw Jim Clancy on Michigan Avenue before we left Chicago. I thought he looked terrible, a withered little hulk of what he used to be. Still beady-eyed and mean, but now old and like he was on drugs or drunk all the time. My Steve says that the people in the Mob, who own those hotels with him, had better be careful or he’ll rob them like he’s robbed everyone else.
How did he father a daughter as beautiful as your son’s bride?
I hope that Rosemarie and Chucky keep away from him. He ruined her mother’s life and he’d ruin Rosemarie’s if he could.
Martha