Chapter 17: The Wives' Table

The recorder did not stay in the bracelet past breakfast.

Aurelio asked for it himself.

He did it across the sunroom table, over a plate of figs, in the mildest voice in the world.

"Rosanna, love. The clasp on that one looks loose. Give it to me, and I'll have my jeweler look."

Wynne's fork stopped halfway to her mouth.

Rosanna had already slid the bracelet off.

She turned it over once, with a small puzzled smile, and handed it down the table.

It was empty.

At two in the morning, Rosanna had lifted the black button out with a hairpin.

Massimo had held the sewing box shut and Wynne had held the lamp.

Rosanna had dropped the button into the toe of one of Wynne's old ballet flats.

It was in the toe now, in a closet in the east wing, under a pile of sweaters.

Aurelio weighed the bracelet in his palm.

"Light," he said. "They don't make them like they used to."

"No," Rosanna said.

He put it in his cardigan pocket and went back to his figs, and nobody at the table ate again.

That afternoon Massimo found a way to talk to her for four minutes in the cellar, with the dryer running.

"We copy it tonight," he said. "Three cards, three places. He can't wipe all three."

"And then?"

"Then it only matters if somebody hears it, and not as a transcript."

"Who?"

"A man with a seat at that table has to hear Aurelio say it in his own voice, with Aurelio sitting there."

"At the wedding."

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