Chapter 6: The Captains' Wives

The next day I carried a three-tier cake into a church hall full of Greco wives.

I had baked it on Friday morning, before any of this, for the christening of a captain's daughter.

Nobody had told me to cancel it.

So I picked it up from the cold room in my father's banya kitchen and put it in the back of Lev's car.

"You don't have to go," Lev said.

"I promised her mother. I've baked every christening cake in that family since I married in."

"They are his people."

"They're my people too. I fed them."

He said nothing and drove.

The hall stood behind St. Rita's, a long room with folding tables and balloons taped to the radiators.

Eighty people turned to look when I came through the doors.

I carried the cake in both hands, and Lev walked behind me carrying the box of candles.

The noise in the hall dropped away until I could hear the radiators knock.

Then the captain's wife, a short round woman with a baby on her hip, crossed the floor.

She put her free arm around my neck without a word and held on.

"We heard," she whispered. "All of it. The cook told the whole street."

"I'm sorry to bring this into your day."

"Don't you dare." She leaned back and looked at me fiercely. "You nursed my mother through the winter. Sit with me."

I set the cake on the table.

Then the wives came.

One by one, women I had known for five years walked up in their church dresses and kissed my cheek.

The woman whose son I had driven to the emergency room.

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