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80 Fortune Ted was a person who liked to go back through things, meticulously, and with extended patience; sorting and unfolding bits of paper and receipts comforted him, gave him a sense of order. Imagine then, his loss, after the death of his son, when Ted’s wallet came up missing—would never be found, though he could not know that then. while bereaved at his diminishment, slowly, Ted did begin again to make out the moving, the lemon finch hovering at the feeder, his wife in the lily garden, the blue and red globes of hot air balloons that traveled over the fields of his home. often they floated so near, Ted could hear their fires, see them shoot up, and the dark figures waved to him. Ted could never, though, shake his grief at his inability to open his old familiar wallet, and realized one morning something he had missed dearly: that crazy slip of fortune his son thought so funny:“There are happy times for you in store.”which store? Benny had kidded. The grocery or the quickie mart? The store where they picked up auto parts? and how Ted wished most for a bit of note left after an argument, when they both sat silently at the kitchen table, and his son slyly pushed a folded message through the loop of the handle of Ted’s coffee cup. “Please dad,” Benny had written,“Just please let it go.” ...

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