Chapter 19: The Sit-Down

My father came into the church hall at ten on Friday morning in a wheelchair.

He wore his good black suit, with an oxygen tank strapped behind him.

Ettore pushed him down the aisle.

I walked on his other side with my hand on the arm of the chair.

Nobody spoke.

Two hundred men and women from both Families stood up as he passed, and the old captain by the window took off his hat.

My father lifted his hand a few inches in greeting, and it shook.

I have never seen anything braver.

The long table sat under the crucifix, as it had for three generations.

Aurelio Falcone was already at his end of it, in his camel coat, with his cane hooked on the chair and a lawyer on either side.

Cesare sat at his right, in a dark suit, with a yellow mark still on his cheek from my second slap.

Beside the Falcone table sat the Greco men, and Fiora's father in front with his arms crossed.

Fiora herself sat with the Orsinis.

She had come at dawn, and the cook had given her a clean blouse and a cup of tea.

She wore her gray coat buttoned over her stomach.

"Alberto," Aurelio said warmly, as my father was wheeled to his place. "I'm glad to see you well."

"Aurelio."

"You should be in bed."

"I'll be in bed soon enough." My father's voice was a thread, but the hall was so quiet that it carried. "I wanted to see your face when you say it."

"Say what?"

"What you've come here to say."

Aurelio smiled, and nodded to the thin lawyer in gray.

The lawyer rose.

"This sit-down is called under the old law of the Families, by the Falcone house, against the Orsini house," he said.

"The charge is breach of the alliance contract.

"On the night of the anniversary, in front of two hundred witnesses, Gianna Orsini removed the betrothal ring and left the table.

"Under the clause both Dons signed, the house that first walks away forfeits the Orsini docks."

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