Chapter 6: The Front Pew

I knew that picture.

I'd looked at it every night for twelve days in the bathroom with the door locked.

The little curl. The dark kidney shape around it. The grain at the edge.

"That's mine," I said.

Nick leaned over my shoulder. Flour all down his black sweater.

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure the way you're sure of your own face."

I zoomed in until it went to blocks.

"But she cut the top off. No clinic, no name, no date. It's a grey blur, Nick. Half the women on the Hill have one just like it on the fridge."

"So she's saying she's pregnant."

"She's saying more than that."

The comments were scrolling faster than I could read them.

"Praying for you and the baby, Mari."

"He'd be so proud."

"Is it true his wife tried to have him killed??"

I turned the phone face down on the counter.

My morning baker came in the back door at five and found me kneading so hard the table moved.

The funeral was Saturday at Holy Ghost, four doors down from my bakery.

The whole Hill came.

Old women came in black lace.

Cooks came from every restaurant on Atwells with their aprons folded in their coat pockets.

Men from the club wore pressed suits that smelled like mothballs and cigars.

They stood on the steps when the hearse pulled up and every one of them took off his hat.

Antonia walked behind the coffin with one hand on it.

I walked beside her.

Nick walked on my other side, close enough that his sleeve touched mine.

At the church door I felt the eyes start.

The whispers came in the side of my head.

"That's her."

"The river, I heard."

"I heard she's not even really..."

I kept walking.

The front pew on the left was the family pew.

The Castigliones had sat in it for three generations. Massimo's father's name was on a little brass plate on the end.

Somebody was already in it.

Marisa sat dead center in a black dress with a black lace veil over her face.

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