Don's Regret Came Too Late novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: Spring on Court Street

The snow soaked straight through the knee of his good trousers.

He didn't seem to notice.

He took a small box out of his coat. Old red velvet, worn pale at the corners.

"I had a speech," he said. "It was very good. I forgot it on the stairs."

One of the women on the folding chairs laughed and covered her mouth.

"Say what you remember," I said.

He looked up at me through the window.

"Every Thursday at four, for four years, I came in for my grandmother's heart pills," he said.

"I know."

"You don't know this part. You deliver. You've always delivered. She could have had them brought to her door by a boy on a bicycle."

I stared at him.

"I came in myself every Thursday," he said, "because it was the only hour of the week I got to stand in front of you."

Behind me, the baby sighed in her sleep.

"I don't want Thursdays anymore," he said. "I want all the days. Her too. Your father too, even with the sugar. Will you marry me, Noemi Pellegrino?"

The four women on the chairs weren't breathing.

Neither was I.

"Yes," I said.

His whole face broke into a grin, his breath steaming in the cold.

"Yes?"

"Yes. Get up. You'll ruin your knee."

"Finally," said the woman on the end chair. "We've been freezing out here since eleven."

"Since eleven?" I said.

"He told us at ten," said another. "He made us promise not to tell you."

Leandro opened the box.

The ring inside was old gold, a small square stone in a heavy setting.

"My grandmother's," he said. "My grandfather gave it to her."

"Your grandfather was a terrible man."

"The ring is very good," he said, and slid it onto my finger through the window.

It fit.

Spring came to Court Street all at once in April.

The trees on our block went white overnight.

The line came back to the door every lunchtime, Corsetti wives and Iannone wives, and nobody counted which was which anymore.

The old woman from the senior building brought anise cookies every Wednesday and held the baby while I filled her insulin.

Papa hired a second tech and spent the extra hour teaching the baby the names of things on the shelf.

"Aspirin," he told her. "Never on an empty stomach. Say it."

"Papa, she's two months old."

"She's listening."

The wedding was going to be in June.

The church on President Street first. Then the party on Court Street itself, closed off like the feast, one long table down the middle of the street.

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