Chapter 23: In Daylight

We were married at eleven in the morning on a Saturday, with the doors of San Domenico propped open to the square.

The priest who had married us at dawn stood at the altar in his best vestments.

He had been crying since half past ten.

"Don't cry on the missal," Gaspare told him loudly from the front pew. "It's the only one you have."

I stood in the vestibule in my mother's ivory dress, with her pearls at my throat.

Nerina stood next to me in dark green, holding a small bunch of lemon blossom from the cliff grove.

"You're sure it's me who walks you?" she said for the third time.

"Who else?"

"Massimo is crying in the front row."

"Massimo can cry. He's a changed man."

"I think he's mostly cold."

"Nerina."

"I'm teasing," she said, and her face softened. "I've never walked anyone anywhere."

"Then take my arm and don't trip."

She took it.

The organ began, and the whole church turned.

I had last come up that aisle at dawn with cut feet and nobody beside me.

Now the pews were full to the doors.

The old man who had laughed sat on the left, with the other heads of the Table in a row behind him.

He lifted his hand to me when I passed.

Santo's men stood against the back wall in their black waiters' vests, hands clasped in front of them, trying to look like ushers.

The young driver with the gold tooth was weeping openly into his sleeve.

In the front pew, the Ardizzone pew, sat my brother in his navy suit.