The Widowed Don Hired a Doctor for His Son, and She Brought Two Boys Who Wore His Face novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Marchetti and Vasari
The wharf was renamed on the twenty-first of December, a Saturday, at ten in the morning.
I had been told there would be a small ceremony.
I had not been told that every boat in the Vasari fleet would stay tied up and flying its flag.
I had not been told that forty captains and their wives would line the pier in their church clothes, or that the Portuguese would bring a band.
It was cold and clear and loud.
The oldest captain's grandson played a trumpet.
Carmela stood at the foot of the outside stair in her black wool coat, with a rosary wound round one wrist and an expression of enormous disapproval at the noise.
She was crying a little.
I put my arm through hers.
"It's a waste of money," she said.
"The band."
"It's a very good band," I said.
"It's the Portuguese," said Carmela.
"They have no sense of proportion."
"Mamma," said Nico, behind us.
"Come and see."
We walked out to the end of the wharf together.
The ice house loomed behind us, gray and old, and the long pier ran out over the water on its row of pilings.
Above the office door hung a new sign.
It was a plank of dark painted wood, nine feet long, with letters cut deep and picked out in white.
MARCHETTI & VASARI
I read it twice.
I read it three times.
"It's got my name on it," I said.
"It has," said Nico.
"Nico, I don't own a boat," I said.
"You own a share," he said.
"Of what?" I said.
"Of a reserve that was in my dead wife's name for six years and has gone back to the people it came from," said Nico.
"There was one lease left over at the end, and I put it in yours."
"You didn't," I said.
"I had it written the day after the supper," he said.
"Why?" I said.
"Because your husband was a Vasari," he said.
"Your sons are Vasaris and Marchettis, and they will own a third of this when they're twenty-one.
"I won't have it said that the wharf came back to the wharf and not to the woman who brought it home."
I looked at him.
I looked at the plank, and at my mother-in-law, who was not looking at either of us, and at the forty captains in their church clothes.
"Nico," I said.
"Yes," he said.
"I'm going to cry in front of the Portuguese," I said.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Widowed Don Hired a Doctor for His Son, and She Brought Two Boys Who Wore His Face are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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