Chapter 8: The Presentation Dinner

Inside the envelope was a stiff card with the crown pressed into the top.

Donna Ludovica Morra requests the presence of Signora Dalia Morra Savino. Saturday, eight o'clock.

Under the print, in the same black ink, someone had added a line.

Bring the children. Use the front door.

Teo read it over my shoulder before I could stop him.

"Tell me what you want me to do Saturday," he said.

"Go," I said. "Sit where they put you. And watch."

On Saturday night I put on my mother's red dress.

It had hung in a garment bag at the back of my closet for thirteen years.

Silk, to the knee, with a square neck and tiny covered buttons down the back.

It smelled like cedar and, very faintly, like her.

Two weeks after twins it didn't close at the top.

Benedetta did the bottom twelve buttons, pinned the rest, and threw a black wrap over my shoulders.

"You look like a Sicilian widow on her way to collect," she said. "It's perfect."

She'd done my hair up, and I'd done hers.

The babies were in matching white, my son already furious about it.

The old bodyguard met us at the Morra gates.

He didn't ask for the card.

He opened the doors to the dining room himself.

It was the biggest room I had ever been in.

A table set for fifty under three chandeliers. Gold chargers, white roses, candles in silver.

Every Don in Chicago sat at it with his wife.

There were old men with heavy rings and women in black and pearls.

The younger men in good suits stopped talking the second I came in.

At the head sat Ludovica in black silk, her oxygen tank tucked beside her chair.

At her right sat Ruggero.

At her left, Carlotta, in white again, with my mother's locket on her chest.

Beside Carlotta sat Teo in a gray tie, as instructed.

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