Chapter 8: Witness

Moira's POV

Gianna's father lived in a brick house in Cranston with a dining room that seated twenty.

On Sunday it was full.

Capos and their wives sat along both sides of the table, and the register lay open at the head, next to a silver pen.

I walked in with Daisy on my shoulder and my head up.

Santo was waiting in the car outside, because the house was not his to enter.

I'd asked him to wait there. It had taken him a long moment to agree.

"Mrs. Ferraro," Gianna's father said. "You honor us."

He did not stand.

Gianna sat beside him in a cream dress, with Rocco in her arms.

She didn't look at me.

Giacomo sat at her other side.

"Please sit," he said. "We were about to begin."

"I'll stand," I said. "I've been told I'm needed."

"The first wife stands witness when a child is entered," the adviser said, from the head of the table. "It's the oldest custom we have."

"What does a witness do?"

"She signs her name beside the father's, and says the child is welcome."

"And if she doesn't say it?"

"Then he is entered anyway."

"So it's decoration," I said.

Somebody at the table coughed.

Giacomo took the silver pen and signed Rocco's line in the register with a flourish.

He slid the book down the table toward me.

"Your turn, Moira. Let's make this easy for everyone."

I looked at the book.

Then I handed Daisy to the woman sitting next to me, a capo's wife I'd served dessert to for six years.

She took her carefully, and I saw her swallow.

I stepped up to the head of the table and didn't touch the pen.

"I'll witness," I said. "But I'm going to say what I witnessed."

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