I lay in bed with butterflies in my stomach. I tossed and turned, swinging between sleeping and waking dreams of a beautiful wedding. The big shiny ring on my finger felt strange but right. “I can’t believe this is happening…I’m getting married! ME! The troubled orphan girl who grew up not knowing love…”
I had a lonely life right from age five when my mother passed away on my tender lap. I didn’t know much about my father, except the one thing my mother had always told me: “He was the one who chose your name a few months before you were born and before he passed away…” Unaware of the truth, I sighed. “How I wish my mother and father were here to see me get married.”
The 22-year-old me had spent my childhood in foster care, taken in by a new family every two months, only to be sent back for being ‘eerily quiet.’ I fled the system and worked every odd job. I got to rent my first little room in the sketchy part of the city. I was unafraid, bitter, and honest to the point of being brutally rude. But then, Ben came along and unlocked a whole new side of me. I started to forgive, I began to laugh and cry with my heart, and I started to dream.
The wedding was supposed to be one that would match my dreams. Ben comes from a well-known family of wealthy industrialists, and they could afford to throw the most beautiful destination wedding for their son. But they didn’t like me, the girl who didn’t understand wealth and status. When they couldn’t convince Ben to leave me, they refused to pay for the wedding. So it was going to be a small, intimate affair, and Ben had painstakingly planned everything down to the last detail, including the guest list.
One on the list was Mr. Hughes, a respected retail chain owner, and one of the first entrepreneurs in the neighborhood. He was a kind man and a mentor to Ben’s father and to him. Mr. Hughes was looking forward to attending the wedding, but the venue was on the outskirts. He decided to ask his driver, Bruce, who had been with him for over 17 years. “Bruce would most definitely know this place,” Mr. Hughes thought.
“Of course I do!” Bruce said, looking at the address at the bottom of the invitation card. But when he read my name, his hands went cold… “I’m going to name my daughter Ashley. Ashley Mary Flinton…has a nice ring to it!” Those words from another lifetime echoed in his mind.
On the wedding day, Mr. Hughes arrived and brightened up the place. But all that laughter and joy vanished when the guests saw me getting ready to walk down the aisle by myself. A few loud voices among the sea of murmurs were enough to hurt me deeply.
“Look at that sheer dress! Did she get that on sale at Target or something? My maid wears better clothes…”
“I swear! But what can you expect? She’s as poor as a church mouse!” another loud voice added, breaking my spirit.
I dropped the bouquet of flowers in my hand and had half a mind to run away. “Maybe they’re right! Maybe I do not deserve any of this!”
Just then, the crowd was distracted by the smooth vroom of a bright red sports car pulling up at the gate. The man who got out of the car dressed in a modest but well-tailored suit was none other than Bruce.
“Oh good, you’re here, my man!” Mr. Hughes stood up and smiled at him.
Bruce walked straight to me. I wiped my tears and was confused at the stranger looking at me with such love in his eyes.
“Ash!” he uttered my name and held my hands in tears.
“Wait…only my mother called me that. How did—”
“I’m your father, child!” Bruce managed to clear his throat and explain himself.
It turned out that my mother had lied to me about my father being dead. And she had also lied to Bruce that she had had a miscarriage. “I knew she was unhappy with me and my simple life, but I didn’t know she would leave me with such a heartbreaking lie…” Bruce said, shaking his head in regret.
“Well, what matters now,” Mr. Hughes stepped in and turned his attention to the stunned crowd, “is that the bride’s father is here right in time to walk her down the aisle.” Mr. Hughes was the true hero of the story. When he saw Bruce’s emotional reaction to the invitation card, he learned the true story and hatched a plan with Bruce to reunite him with his daughter on her big day.
The guests who were mocking me now suddenly found tears in their eyes as they witnessed a father and a daughter who had found each other despite all odds. And they were even more shocked when Bruce handed me the keys to the bright red sports car.
“This doesn’t make up for anything,” Bruce told me, “but it is my wedding gift to you and my son-in-law! And I promise it is the first of many, sweetheart.”
I couldn’t hold back my tears as I accepted the keys and proceeded to the father-daughter dance I thought I would never have. And when the evening was over, and I left for my new home with Ben, Bruce smiled through tears. He smiled because he knew he hadn’t just given me away, but had gotten me back, too. I had found my father, and I finally understood what it meant to be chosen and loved.
