Chapter 4: The Councilman's Card

On Sunday I peeled potatoes in my mother's apron.

Nonna had hung it on the nail by the back door eleven years ago, and it had never moved.

The aunts passed behind me with trays of cold cuts and said nothing.

They had decided to be polite, which was worse than the silence.

At one o'clock the front bell rang.

Nonna looked through the lace curtain and turned around.

"That one is for you," she said.

I wiped my hands and went to the front hall.

A man stood on the porch in a charcoal suit with a Mass card and a white envelope in one hand.

He was lean, with sandy hair and a good easy smile, and he looked about thirty-three.

"Lotta," he said. "I'm Fergal Costigan. I don't expect you remember me."

"You're the one my father's table offered me to."

"I'm the one who got told no." He laughed, and it sounded honest.

"It was the best thing that happened to me that year," he said. "I'm sorry for your loss."

He gave me the envelope, and I stood there holding it.

"You were in the hall that night," I said. "You heard me say it."

"I did."

"I said no to your father in front of everyone, and then I went upstairs. I never said a word to you."

Fergal frowned.

"I heard a story," he said. "I never believed it. And I never held it against you."

"What story?"

"That isn't what I was..."

He stopped himself and shook his head.

"Never mind. Not today, with your father in the ground."

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