Chapter 29: The Price, Paid

Leni planned the party in six days.

She did it from the couch, with her clipboard, by phone.

"Sunday," she said. "At the house. Everybody. And Bunny."

"Bunny doesn't come back to Providence," I said. "She hasn't been here since 1986."

"I already called her."

"What did she say?"

"She said, 'Sweetheart, I'll need a seat with legroom.'"

Bunny landed on Saturday night.

I met her at the curb with a sign on the back of a pizza box.

THE FERRYMAN SAYS YOU CAN COME HOME.

She read it through her rhinestone sunglasses.

She took them off.

She stood very still on a sidewalk in Providence for the first time in forty years.

She had her suitcase and her cowboy boots and her hair a foot high.

"It's smaller," she said.

"Everything's smaller after Las Vegas."

"No, kid." She put her sunglasses back on. "I mean it's smaller than I was afraid of."

On Sunday the house on the Hill was full by one.

The capos came with their wives.

The older one came with a tray of his wife's cannoli.

He stood under the fig tree with his hat in his hand, telling Bunny about 1981.

The linen-supply driver came in a clean shirt and stood by the garden wall.

Bunny looked at him for a long minute across the garden.

Then she walked over in her boots.

"You've got her chin," she said. "Your mother's. She roomed with me her first two years out here. Made the best biscuits in Clark County."

He stared at her.

"She sent you a cowboy every Christmas," Bunny said. "I printed the postcards."

He put both his hands over his face.

Bunny hugged him.

Leni ran the kitchen.

She wasn't allowed to lift anything either, so she pointed.

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