Rick read the rest of my fathers letter on the big screen, in front of two hundred guests, and he turned white, and he let go of his wifes hand, because my father knew him.
My father, a firefighter, had carried a man out of a burning building twenty years ago, a man who then stiffed him on a debt and vanished, and that man was Rick, the same Rick whose vow renewal was being paid for with my dead fathers wedding money.
My dad left me twenty five thousand dollars for the wedding he could not live to see. For your wedding, Katie girl. I want you to have the day I cannot give you. My future mother in law Sheryl offered to hold it so it would be safe, and then she spent every dollar of it on her own thirtieth anniversary vow renewal. A courthouse wedding is more humble anyway, she told me. Do not be greedy.
So I got married at the courthouse. Twelve minutes. Nobody from my side. And then Sheryl asked me to make the slideshow for her big country club vow renewal, because I am good with computers.
I was good with computers. The first slide was my father in his fire uniform. The second was the bank statement, twenty five thousand dollars, transferred to Sheryl Morgan. The third was the receipt for her nine thousand dollar dress. The fourth, the country club. The fifth, the ice swan. Every one paid from my dead fathers account.
And the last slide was the letter I found in his firehouse locker and never showed anyone. Katie girl, if anyone ever tries to take this money from you, show them this.
The letter told the story. Twenty years ago my father ran into a burning apartment building and carried a man out over his shoulder. That man borrowed money from my father afterward, to get back on his feet, and never paid a cent, and disappeared, and my father wrote that he never regretted saving a life but he learned something about the man he saved. That some people take from whoever is kind enough to carry them.
The man my father carried out, and lent to, and never saw again, was Rick. Sheryls husband. My fiances stepfather. The man whose vow renewal my fathers money was paying for.
My father recognized him, in the letter, years before any of this, and warned me, from his firehouse locker, that the family I was marrying into had a taker at the head of the table.
Rick let go of Sheryls hand on that dance floor because a man who has been carried out of a fire by another man, and then robbed that mans daughter of her wedding, cannot hold anybodys hand while two hundred people read the proof.
The twenty five thousand dollars is being returned, because a documented transfer and receipts are not hard to follow, and a vow renewal thrown on a dead firefighters money does not survive the firefighter getting the last word.
Josh, my husband, shrugged when his mother took my fathers money. She will pay it back, he said, let us just do the courthouse. He is learning, slowly, that a man who shrugs when his mother robs your dead father is a man with a shrug where his spine should be. We are in counseling. It is not going quickly.
I have the twenty five thousand dollars again. I am going to have the wedding my father wanted me to have, late, with my side of the family there this time, and his fire uniform photo on a table by the door. For your wedding, Katie girl. I had to fight for it. But I am going to have the day he could not give me, exactly as he wanted.