Ruining a wedding is the last thing you want to do. Yet William knew that what he was going to tell his granddaughter might do just that…
His granddaughter Debbie was going to marry her fiancé Anthony. But this day was not going to go the way they expected.
Just before the ceremony began, William approached Debbie, grabbed her arms, and whispered in her ear, “I know the truth.”
Just 10 minutes after William made his confession to Debbie, she walked down the aisle with her father by her side. It was as if nothing had happened, yet William felt terrible. Surely what he had just said had to have an impact? How could she pretend it didn’t matter to her?
As the ceremony progresses, the couple is asked to deliver some words to each other that they have prepared. Anthony goes first, and the whole room is in tears by the end of it. It is clear how much he loves his bride. But Debbie’s words leave the crowd, and especially William, with a completely different feeling…
Instead of facing Anthony, Debbie turns and begins to address the audience. She has tears in her eyes, and her voice is shaking. Everybody is shocked; what is going on here? But William knows exactly what’s coming, and it’s his fault… And what she reveals next would send William to his knees while crying his eyes out…
But what did Debbie reveal to the crowd?
The night before the wedding, William’s mood was very bad. He knew he should just go to sleep and not think too much about the wedding, but he couldn’t let go of his thoughts. He had spent so much money on the wedding; would he really go and ruin it by talking about what he discovered?
It had been a hard couple of years for William; after losing his wife five years ago. Until he met Fiona. But this did not make all things great again. Fiona’s daughter and her husband had died in an accident three years ago, and since then she has lived with her two grandchildren. William had to adapt, especially when he saw his new granddaughter Debbie…
From the first moment they met, William had felt butterflies. He had been married before himself, but unfortunately, his wife passed away shortly after they tied the knot. This didn’t come as a surprise, however, as William was very aware that she was sick before asking to marry her.
It was more of a gesture to prove that he loved her no matter what and that he wanted to make her dream of being married to him become a reality before she was bound to leave this world. It took William years to get over this, but when he finally felt ready again, there was Fiona.
Fiona is a woman a couple years younger than him, but that does not matter to him. She had recently been through a divorce. The two hit it off instantly and William at first had no problem with the fact that she lived with two of her grandchildren. As a matter of fact, he was actually very excited about it.
He had always wanted to be a father and a grandfather but knew that the chance of him having children of his own became slimmer with every year passing. He saw this as the next best thing, but things would not go as he had wished for a while after getting together with Fiona.
She had a 24-year-old grandson named Eric who William instantly connected with and vice versa. Eric despised his grandfather for leaving and was very open to letting William be his new granddad. But how smooth things went with Eric, that’s how difficult they were with William’s new granddaughter Debbie.
Debbie was already 27 years old and much more set in her way and her own life compared to Eric. She was often grumpy and made it clear she had absolutely no interest in William. During the early phase of William and Fiona’s relationship, she barely even looked at him.
Another problem they faced was that Debbie was also still in very close contact with her biological grandfather Peter, a man that William despised. Even though it was Peter who caused the divorce, by cheating on Fiona with a colleague, William knew that Peter was still bitter about the divorce.
But for some reason, Debbie didn’t seem to mind this at all. It almost seemed like she was more upset with her mother for initiating the divorce. Like all she cared about was that her life was changing and she didn’t like that at all. But William really wanted to change this.
William tried his best to connect with Debbie on any level, but she was holding everything off. And the more he tried, the more she tried to keep her distance from him, spending most of her time at her boyfriend’s parents’ house nowadays. Fiona didn’t like this, and it even made her start to have doubts about her relationship with William.
This was strange behavior for Debbie; she was never absent this often when Fiona was still married to her ex-husband Peter. Did she prefer to stay away from William over spending time with Fiona? She never wanted her grandchildren to have a bad relationship with her lover. These worries started to fill her thoughts more and more.
At first, William mostly enjoyed everything he did with Fiona, but after a while, he noticed she enjoyed it less. William became aware of Fiona’s doubts and worries and felt like he had to do something to save his relationship with her and with his granddaughter. But then an opportunity suddenly presented itself.
After a while, William and Fiona took the next step, and he moved in with Fiona permanently. By this time, Debbie had been home a little more often than she had before, calming Fiona’s doubts. William was coming home that day extremely excited as he had received some very good news.
The owner of the start-up company William had been working for for the past 2,5 years had sold the whole company to an investor for millions of dollars. While this of course brought some initial uncertainty with it for the employees, they had been promised that they would be able to keep their job.
But this was not even what had made William so excited. Since most of the employees were very loyal and had a big impact on the growth of the company, the now ex-owner decided he wanted to give everybody a thank you gift. Nobody expected much, but he gifted them all 25.000 dollars as a big thank you.
On the way home, William kept thinking about what he could do with the money. He could invest it in renovating parts of the house that needed some work. Or maybe go on a vacation with Fiona? A new car potentially! But the ideal things to spend the money on would soon unexpectedly present themselves to William.
When he got home, Fiona was sitting on the couch, and Debbie was standing in front of her together with Anthony. For one of the first times, Debbie actually didn’t seem annoyed to see him at all and gestured for him to come to sit on the couch with Fiona.
Debbie and Anthony had some exciting news for them. They had been together for over three years now, and they were ready for the next big step in their lives; they were getting married! Anthony had proposed to her that morning even asking Debbie’s grandfather for his blessing, which he had granted.
William had mixed feelings about the news… While William was really happy for the pair, it did feel like a bit of a gut punch that he wasn’t asked for his blessing, but also knew that this was very unrealistic. He wasn’t Debbie’s real granddad and had to accept that.
When they got to discussing the wedding somewhat further, William found to doubt that it probably would not be for another 2 years as they had no money for it whatsoever. And that is when it hit William. This should be what he spends his gift money on! It was perfect!
William stood up in the middle of Debbie explaining the situation catching everybody off guard. “Debbie, sweety, I have good news for you!”. He told Debbie and Anthony about the big bonus that he had just gotten from work and that he was willing to use it towards their wedding.
But this wasn’t everything William said. He also made a big statement about how he truly believed in the love between Antony and Debbie and wanted to give his blessing to the marriage. Antony immediately seemed ecstatic by this and even stood up to hug William, but for some reason, Debbie didn’t.
William did not quite know what to expect, but it was definitely a similar if not more excited reaction from his step-granddaughter but was left disappointed. Debbie barely reacted to what William had said to the couple. At first, William thought that she might need to process what he had just offered him.
But all William got was a fairly sober thank you, a smile, and a short hug. Then Debbie and Anthony headed upstairs to her room and didn’t come down until it was late in the evening. William was confused; he did everything he could to be a good grandfather… He decided to talk about it with Fiona.
But unfortunately, Fiona also had no explanation for Debbie’s lack of a reaction to this incredible offer. She had also never understood why Debbie acted so cold to William. She had tried to talk about it with Debbie a few times now, but it always remained a very strange situation which she couldn’t grasp…
Debbie never had a bad word to say about William, but she said to Fiona she is just herself around William and that she doesn’t think she’s any grumpier around him than around other people. That was all she wanted to explain about it most of the time. But William couldn’t make anything of this explanation.
William started to doubt if he still wanted to pay for the wedding, but he was not going to go back on his promise. He and Fiona didn’t really need the extra money anyway, and at the very least Fiona herself and Anthony appreciated the gesture which for now was enough for William. It had to be.
In the next couple of months, Debbie and Anthony went ahead with planning the wedding. They came up with an extensive wedding plan including what they thought the total cost would be and presented it to William. To his surprise, it came out a lot lower than he had expected.
William was amazed and thought they felt bad for receiving so much money. William told them that they didn’t have to spare expenses just because he was paying for it, but the couple kept saying that this was all that they wanted. William trusted them with making the right decisions and transferred the money to Debbie.
Again, the thank you was sober, but William did have a feeling that it was genuine. During the weeks preparing for the wedding, William tried to be involved as much as possible and unlike William thinking beforehand, Debbie was actually allowing him to help and share his thoughts.
William actually started feeling like he had started to connect with Debbie more and more. He was glad that it finally seemed to get better and he had high hopes for the future. He felt like he was finally truly accepted in the family. But then something happened that completely changed this feeling for William.
It was the evening before the wedding and William and Fiona were enjoying a glass of wine on the couch. Then Fiona got called by an unknown number. She picked up the phone, but when she heard who it was, her face went white. William saw this and immediately went to check on her.
It was someone she had not spoken to for years, for a major reason. It was Fiona’s ex-husband, Peter. Fiona was shocked and dropped the phone, so William quickly intervened. William grabbed her phone, took a deep breath, and answered. Only hearing the voice of Peter made William sick to his stomach.
Peter told William that he didn’t like to talk to William any more than he did to him. He just called to inform me that he was going to come to the wedding tomorrow so that they would not be surprised by his presence. William felt a lump in his throat, everything seemed to go so well so far, but now everything seemed to fall apart…
Peter said he was specifically invited by Debbie and Antony. They had talked with him for a bit and said his presence would be very important to them. This surprised William a lot at first as he thought Debbie did not have that much contact with Peter in the last few months.
William was devastated… For him, the thought of having to meet Peter at the wedding was a disaster. Knowing how much pain Peter had caused Fiona, he began to feel very angry. This big twist made William even consider not going to the wedding at all; he did not know if he could handle this…
For years he had fantasized about punching this man in the face, but now he was going to have to be on his best behavior. But he knew that Debbie was worth it. Even though he couldn’t understand her decision to invite Peter at all, he had to respect it.
Then the big day of the wedding of Anthony and Debbie was finally there. William and Fiona had arrived there as one of the first people to help welcome all the guests and make sure things were going smoothly as the soon-to-be weds were preparing for the ceremony.
Everything was going smoothly until Peter showed up. It was worse than they had imagined. He was late, smelled like alcohol, and wasn’t even man enough to look William in the eye or acknowledge him. He only greeted Fiona and even wanted to go in for a hug, which she firmly rejected.
Peter was about to get irritated about Fiona rejecting his hug, but the situation was quickly defused by Eric who took his father to show him where he was seated for the ceremony. Fiona and William barely had any time to get upset as they had to get to their seats themselves.
But when they got to the room, William was extremely surprised by his seating. While Fiona was sitting in the front (And fairly close to Peter), William was sitting all the way in the back in the corner. And that while there was even a seat free next to Fiona that was unreserved.
William felt deeply offended and saddened as to him this was a hard reality. He finally realized how much Debbie actually valued him. He now knew that she absolutely didn’t value him. But then the ceremony started. Anthony quickly made his way to the podium and then it was Debbie’s turn.
From a door behind William, Debbie stepped out in a gorgeous wedding dress. She looked beautiful. William expected her to pass him without even acknowledging he was there. But something unexpected happened; she actually stopped next to him and stuck her hand out. William could barely believe what was happening.
“Granddad, would you do me the honor of walking me down the aisle?”. William’s jaw dropped all the way to the floor. He never expected this but could not be happier. He stood up and arm in arm with his granddaughter they made their way to the front.
They walked towards the aisle, and after they got to the front of the room. Debbie gestured that he could now take his seat next to Fiona. While walking toward his seat, he caught a quick glimpse of Peter’s face. He did not look happy at all, and William was loving it.
The rest of the ceremony was beautiful. The speeches in which Debbie and Anthony talked about their love for each other moved the whole room. But when Debbie was done, she turned to the crowd and told everybody that she had one more message to share with them.
She turned her focus to William, who she first thanked for paying for the wedding. But then also started telling the crowd about how good he had been to her ever since he joined the family even though she had still been stuck on her biological grandfather Peter.
She continued that only after Peter started having less and less contact with her, did she realize how much better William had been for her all that time and had felt deeply embarrassed about her behavior. She had no idea how to make it up to him until now.
Then, Debbie called William on stage; by now he was extremely emotional, and he was escorted by Fiona, who also had no idea of what was happening. Then Anthony grabbed a piece of paper from his pocket and gave it to crying Debbie who then showed it to William.
“William. Granddad. You have been so good to me, and you have been a real grandfather to me. From now on, I will be your granddaughter!” When Debbie spoke those words, William fell to his knees, and the crowd erupted. It was an amazing moment!
All William‘s worries and sadness had made way for a feeling of joy he had not experienced since marrying Fiona. He stood up and Debbie for minutes on end. By this point, Peter had left the room. He knew he had failed as a granddad and just couldn’t bear it anymore.
William hugged the couple and went back to his seat, after which the attention turned back to Debbie and Anthony, and they gave each other the yes that sealed them in Marriage forever. It was incredible how much could change in one day and how much happiness could be gained in mere minutes.
