Chapter 13: The Coffin Opens

The church was full by a quarter to ten.

Fabio met us in the vestibule with his tie crooked and a screwdriver in his jacket pocket.

"All six heads came," he said. "Papa told them it was a family matter and they should stay for the burial."

"Where is he?"

"Front pew. Carlo's next to him. Carlo hasn't spoken since last night."

My mother wore the navy coat I had bought her at the airport, and she held my arm with both hands.

"I can wait out here," she said.

"No, Mama. You're the reason we came."

I pushed the doors open.

The coffin sat at the front under white flowers, and the priest stood beside it with his book already open.

Two of my father's men had their hands on the lid's handles.

The organ stopped in the middle of a note.

Two hundred people turned around, and the whispering started at the back and ran forward ahead of us.

My father stood up.

He looked at my mother, and for the first time in my life I watched him have nothing to say.

Then he found it.

"Viviana," he said. "You're not a Lanzetta. You have no standing in this church."

"Then I'm a guest," I said. "Guests can ask a question at a funeral."

"Father," Carlo said, very low. "Sit down."

My father didn't sit.

I walked up the aisle with my mother on my arm, past the second pew, where the six heads of the families watched me without blinking.

The oldest of them was eighty-one and kept a cane across his knees.

He nodded to me once.

I stopped at the coffin.

"Fabio," I said. "Open it."

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