The Invitation

“Welcome, Mr DaCosta,” said Laura with a big smile as she ushered Tony into the house.

“Thank you, Mr Harrison. Please, call me Tony,” he said graciously.

He was dressed formally in a dark suit with a crisp white shirt and a dark patterned tie.

John was waiting in the hallway to greet Tony. He cleared his throat self-consciously and extended his right hand to the man he’d kicked out of his home barely a week ago.

“Welcome back to my home,” John said almost grudgingly.

“Thank you for inviting me,” said Tony, accepting John’s handshake. He noted how the other man’s grip nearly misaligned his fingers but he wasn’t offended.

“Please, come with me. Kate is waiting in the living room,” John said and led the way.

Once they entered the living room, Kate rose to her feet but did not step forward to greet Tony. She was dressed in a grey frock and her freshly washed hair billowed about her shoulders like a lion’s mane.

For a moment, Tony was spellbound by Kate’s natural beauty. She wasn’t wearing makeup right now, but she was incredibly stunning. Her skin shone like a polished ornament. It was as if he was seeing her for the first time.

Her winged brows stood proudly above brown almond-shaped eyes, framed with a generous row of full eyelashes. Her Nubian nose was bordered by prominent cheekbones. And then there were her lips… full, luscious, and… pursed at the moment.

“Ehem!” John coughed loudly to interrupt Tony’s silent admiration of his daughter.

“Good afternoon, Mr DaCosta,” Kate greeted him formally.

Tony smiled and said, “Good afternoon, Miss Harrison. Pardon me for gawking at you so rudely. You simply look exceptionally beautiful today.”

“In this ugly dress?” Kate asked with a raised eyebrow. She wasn’t buying his lavish compliment.

“Trust me, you would still look breathtaking in a sack,” Tony joked but nobody laughed. He cleared his throat and waited to be offered a seat.

“Please, sit down,” said Laura, indicating the chair adjacent to the one Kate was sitting on before. “Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?”

“No, thank you, Mrs Harrison. I’d just had lunch before coming here,” Tony answered.

Everyone sat down. There was a minute or two of awkward silence before John spoke.

“Let me first apologize for how things ended the last time you were here, Mr DaCosta. It’s just that, your proposal caught me off-guard. I was still reeling from the shock of suddenly finding out that my daughter was pregnant.”

“You don’t have to apologize. I completely understand,” Tony said warmly.

“I’m glad to hear that,” said John. “Now, I’d like to apologize for dragging you away from your business in Chicago to come here to see us. I know you are a very busy man, so I’d like to thank you for responding positively to our invitation. I owe Mayor Wallace one for helping me get across to you.”

“You don’t have to apologize for inviting me here. I was going to come anyway. I have unfinished business here,” Tony explained.

John took a deep breath and said, “Now, let’s get to the heart of the matter and talk about why you are here. As you already know, my daughter here, got pregnant by her boyfriend who has already left the town to pursue his MBA program in Michigan.

“I know that we live in an era where it has become glamorous for young women to get pregnant out of wedlock and raise their children alone. I understand that different circumstances would require some women to raise their kids alone, but I don’t want that for my daughter. Yes, she has made a mistake, but my wife and I believe that the situation can still be salvaged discreetly.”

John paused so that the implication of the last word he said would settle in Tony’s mind.

“Go on,” Tony prompted him, although he knew where this conversation was headed.

“As you can see,” John continued. “We live in a small town filled with very religious and sometimes, judgmental people. Well, I’m sure you already know that’s typical with small communities, right?”

“Yes, I know,” Tony answered calmly, waiting for John to get to the main point of this meeting.

“You see, my position as a clergy in this town requires that my family and I must hold ourselves to the utmost moral standards obtainable,” John explained. “But as it stands now, my daughter’s little indiscretion has disrupted that moral code that sets us apart from others.”

Kate didn’t like being talked about as if she wasn’t there, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Her mother had instructed her to remain quiet and let her father do the talking.

It had taken a lot of convincing from her mother to get her dad to agree to this meeting. Kate didn’t like how her dad was struggling to explain the situation to Tony, who clearly had it all figured out. After all, he was here when she broke the news of her pregnancy to her parents.

“As I said before, I was caught off guard when you proposed to marry my daughter,” John continued. “I presume you might understand why I reacted to that proposal the way I did. We barely know anything about you apart from what you’ve told us and the little information my wife has been able to glean from the internet.”

“I’m sure you didn’t find much about me on the internet either,” Tony said with an understanding smile.

“That’s true,”’ said Laura. “We could barely find even a recent photo of you.”

“That’s deliberate,” Tony confessed. “After my wife passed away three years ago, I became some sort of a recluse. I only recently became active in the business again.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your wife’s passing,” Laura said sympathetically while John mumbled his agreement. “Do you mind telling us what happened to her?”

“I don’t mind at all,” said Tony. “She died of ovarian cancer. We got to know about it too late. Hers was particularly aggressive. She passed away within a few months of the diagnosis.”

“That must have been rough,” John said with genuine sympathy.

“It was,” Tony admitted with a sad smile. “Remembering that time doesn’t hurt so much anymore. I guess time truly does heal everything.”

Seeing this side of Tony reduced Kate’s resentment towards him. She still didn’t like him, but she could see that he was an actual human being with feelings and not just a rich robotic man.

The possibility of Kate agreeing to marry Tony was increasing with every passing minute as she listened to him answering her parents' questions confidently. The man seemed like an open book and Kate hoped that indeed he was, because whatever she decided after this meeting would seriously impact the rest of her life.