Chapter 17: Eighty Guests

Sabina's POV

"I'm going to sit at Ignazio's right," I said in the car. "I'm telling you, not asking."

Tancredi looked out at Hylan Boulevard going by.

The ring was in my purse, and the green ledger was under my arm.

"Is it what you want?" he said.

"It's what I'm going to do."

He turned his head and looked at me for a long moment.

"Then I'll be where you can see me," he said.

My uncle's hall had eighty places laid, white cloths, a string quartet and an ice swan.

Orsola stood at the door in a silver dress with the dock captain's arm through hers.

She kissed me on both cheeks.

"You came," she said. "I was so afraid you wouldn't."

"I wouldn't miss it."

Table One stood on a low platform under a chandelier.

Ignazio rose when he saw me come up the steps alone, and he held my chair, and the whole room watched me sit at his right hand.

Tancredi took a seat at the far end of the head table, six chairs away.

I saw the dock captain look from him to me and smile.

Ignazio patted my hand.

"Good girl," he said, under the music. "You've made an old man very happy."

I let him think so through the soup and the fish.

I let him feed me from his own plate.

Over the veal he stood and tapped his glass, and the room fell quiet.

"My friends," he said. "My family. We have had a hard week."

He gave them the hospital, and the boy in the bed, and the lilies.

His voice shook in the right place.

"A family heals," Ignazio said, "when its women have a voice. Cara, will you say a word?"

I stood.

My knees were steady, which surprised me.

Eighty faces turned up to the platform, and every captain I had mailed a birthday card to was looking at me.

"Thank you, Zio," I said. "I won't be long."

I put the green ledger on the white cloth and opened it.

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