He Spoke Her Language, So I Said Goodbye novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: Forty Years
The judge threw out the claim before lunch and told Dante's lawyer to bill his client for the time.
Four days later I stood at the back of St. Anthony's parish hall in the one dress I owned that wasn't black.
Rosa had invited me herself, and she'd said it in English, twice.
The hall was ninety people, folding tables, trays of baked ziti and a banner that said forty years in gold letters.
Under the banner was a framed photo of a man with Luca's jaw and a mustache.
I had never met Luca's father, and I knew exactly who he was.
Bridget stood beside me with a plate of cannoli and a face that said she'd come for the food.
"This is the most Catholic thing I've ever done," she whispered.
"You were baptized."
"Not in a room with this many saints."
Dante sat at the family table near the front.
Rosa had let him come, because he was her son, and she'd put him two chairs from the aisle and nowhere near the cake.
Gianna was beside him in black, with her hands in her lap.
Neither of them had looked toward the back of the room once.
After the toast and the first plates, Rosa tapped her glass with a fork.
"My son wants to say something," she said. "Everybody sit, and be quiet, and listen."
She said it in English.
Luca stood up at the head table.
He had put on a suit.
It was the first time I'd seen him in one, and I couldn't look anywhere else.
"Thank you for coming," he said. "My mother asked me to say a few words about my father. I'm going to say them, and then I'm going to say something else."
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