He Faked My Death, So I Let My Family Bury Me novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: Good Morning, Rosaria

The chapel at Monreale was full.

Black dresses and dark suits stood in rows to the back wall, and the smell of lilies was heavy in the air.

I had expected that.

I had not expected my own face on a stand by the altar, in a silver frame, with candles in front of it.

I stood in the vestibule with my hand on my husband's arm.

I wore the mended green dress, and no veil.

"Ready?" Gaspare said.

"Ask me again at the door."

"Are you ready, Rosaria?"

"Yes."

We walked in.

It took the front rows a moment to turn, because a priest was already speaking.

Then a woman in the third row dropped her prayer book.

I knew her.

She was my mother's oldest friend, and she had eaten at my table every Easter for nine years.

She made a small choked sound.

Others turned.

The murmur ran up the aisle ahead of us and broke at the altar, where the priest stopped in the middle of a word.

I kept walking.

Gaspare walked at my side, a half step back, with his hands empty.

The oldest capo was in the first pew, and he stood up and bowed his head to me.

Then the whole row of capos stood, one at a time.

"Father," I said to the priest. "Forgive the interruption. I'd like to say a word at my own Mass."

He opened his mouth.

He closed it.

He stepped aside.

I climbed the one step to the altar rail and turned around.

Two hundred people looked back at me.

I saw my mother's friends, and the wives of capos, and the women who had come to my kitchen and eaten my food and never once asked about my sister's gun.

"I'm Rosaria Lanzetta," I said. "Some of you buried me a month ago."

Nobody breathed.

"I was at the funeral. I stood at the back in a veil. I heard what you said about me."

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