Chapter 10: City Hall

"Friday," I said. "This Friday?"

"You said in public. City Hall's public."

"I have nothing to wear."

"You have two days and a mother with a sewing machine."

He had me there.

Boston City Hall is a concrete fortress, and on Friday morning there were thirty people outside it with signs.

FINISH THE JOB.

NO MOB AT MERCY.

One sign had my face on it, with Conall's drawn over my shoulder like a devil.

"Davis sent a protest," said my charge nurse, reading the signs. "To your wedding."

"His campaign sent it. Davis wouldn't get up this early."

"Should I hit someone?"

"You're my witness. Witnesses don't hit people."

"Says who?"

My mother held Niamh, who wore a white knit cap and an expression of deep suspicion.

My father wore his dress uniform from the fire department.

Grandda wore his funeral suit again and a carnation.

He'd tied a white ribbon around the neck of his oxygen tank.

"I'm giving you away," he'd told me that morning. "Your father had his turn. He gave you to the wrong one."

The kid was on the steps with a cane, in a suit too big in the shoulders.

He'd come to hold doors.

Conall's driver stood beside him and said nothing, which seemed to be his whole job.

Conall stood at the top of the steps.

Charcoal suit. White shirt. No tie.

He'd had his hair cut.

He watched me come up the steps on Grandda's arm, one step at a time, because Grandda only had breath for one at a time.

The chanting got louder.

A boy with a megaphone yelled, "She's marrying a killer!"

Grandda stopped on the fourth step.

He took the tube out of his nose.

He turned to the boy with the megaphone.

"Son, I've buried better men than you over less, and I'm eighty-nine. Get out of my granddaughter's light."

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