Chapter 18: Returned in Person

The Signora stopped in front of me and held out both hands.

They were trembling, with the rings still on.

"How do I do it?" she said.

"The chairman says you hold my hands and mean it," I said. "That's all."

She looked back once at her husband in the third row.

He was staring at the floor.

"I do mean it," she said.

I took her hands.

For a second nothing happened, and I felt foolish.

Then something went through her fingers into mine, small and sweet and exactly the size of six percent.

It hit under my ribs.

I gasped.

Leone had warned me.

It hurt far more than losing it had.

It was like blood returning to a sleeping arm, a thousand bright needles, except the arm was my whole chest.

And under the needles was a warmth I knew.

It was the way I used to feel when Fabrizio came through the front door.

"I'm sorry," the Signora whispered.

"I know."

"Is it all right? Are you all right?"

"I think so."

She let go.

She stood there with her hands open and empty, and her face changed.

I watched her look across the hall at her husband and find nothing.

He lifted his head and looked at her, and I saw him see it too.

"My dear," he said, quietly.

"I know," she said. "It's gone. It was never mine."

He stood up.

For a moment I thought he would walk out.

He came down the aisle instead and stopped in front of her.

"I didn't ask you where you got it," he said. "I felt you come back from the ocean that spring and I thought, at last. I never asked."

"I know."

"I'd like to learn it, if you'd let me. The slow way."

The Signora put her hand over her mouth.

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