Chapter 4: Her Own Funeral

I went to my own funeral in a dead woman's lace.

Fausta's sister had worn the veil in 1971, and it smelled of cedar and camphor.

It fell to my chin and turned the whole church into a grey blur with candles in it.

Saint Anselm's was full.

I sat in the last pew behind a stone column, with Fausta's shoulder pressed against mine.

She had said she would hold my hand if I needed it.

I had said I would not need it.

She held it anyway.

At the front, a white casket sat under a mountain of cream roses.

I knew there was nobody inside.

Pietro's men had filled it with sandbags in the dark, and the doctor had signed the papers.

Even so, I couldn't look at it for long.

My mother stood beside it in black.

Her back was straight as a ruler, and she held the crucifix at her throat in one fist.

The choir began a hymn.

My mother cried through the whole thing.

Real tears ran down her face, and she didn't wipe them.

When the last note died, she took out a handkerchief and dried her eyes in one clean motion, and she didn't cry again.

I counted.

It was one hymn.

Irene sat in the front pew in a black dress with a high neck.

At her throat was a double strand of pearls.

I knew those pearls.

My father had bought them the year before he died, and he had told me they were for my wedding day.

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