Chapter 24: The Third Wedding Night

We married in my mother's backyard on a Saturday in October, under a tomato trellis with the vines cut back.

Thirty people came.

Aldo sat in the last row in a plain grey suit and said nothing to anyone, and Rosa had put him there herself.

I carried my own bouquet.

I had cut the stems at five that morning at the shop on Hope Street.

It was white ranunculus and rosemary.

I had tied it with a strip of my father's old work shirt.

Nobody had planned it for me.

Luca stood at the end of the grass in a dark suit with his hands folded in front of him, and he did not look away once while I walked.

The priest from St. Brendan's read the vows.

I said mine in a voice that did not shake. Luca's shook, and he did not try to hide it.

"I'll ask you every morning," he said. "Every question I should have asked three years ago. I'll ask it, and I'll listen."

"I'll ask back," I said.

"Good."

He kissed me, and my mother cried loud enough to be heard in the street.

At the party, someone put a glass of champagne in Luca's hand and Rosa raised her own.

"To the second husband who was the first," she said.

Everyone laughed. Luca took one swallow and one more.

Aldo came across the grass to me with his hat in his hands.

"Stefano took the plea on Thursday," he said. "Eleven years. Bianca got three, and she asked me to tell you she's sorry."

"Tell her I heard it."

He nodded and went back to his seat.

Twenty minutes later Luca was asleep in a lawn chair with his tie loose and his chin on his chest.

I stood over him with my hands on my hips.

"Half a glass," said my mother, delighted. "I told you. Every time."

She went into the house and came back with the same blanket she had spread over his knees at our first wedding party.

I took it out of her hands.

"I'll do it," I said.

I tucked it around him myself.

He did not wake. He breathed slowly, and one hand opened on his knee.

I sat on the grass beside the chair with my back against his leg.

I ate cake off a paper plate and let the party go on around us.

An hour later I leaned over him.

"Husband," I said.

His eyes opened.

"Did I miss it?"

"Only the speeches."

"Were they good?"

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