Chapter 19: The Question

At four o'clock on Monday, the lawn of the Carraro house held two families who had never stood in the same place.

The Crowninshields came in rented cars and one tour bus Phoebe had ordered from her phone.

The Carraro men and their wives came on foot from the road, in dark suits, with their arms folded.

They stood on one side of the grass, and the cousins stood on the other, and the harbor lay flat and blue behind both.

My mother sat in a garden chair with her cane across her knees, wearing the blue dress.

"You look nervous," she said.

"I'm not nervous."

"Your hands are in your hair."

I took them out.

Phoebe leaned over from the chair beside her.

"The Carraro guy in the grey tie has been staring at me for ten minutes," she said. "I think he wants to adopt me."

"Please don't talk to him."

"Too late. I asked him if there were snacks."

Rosalind stood at the foot of the steps, in an apron she had refused to take off, with a spoon in her pocket.

She caught my eye and pressed her lips together to keep from smiling.

Then the front door opened, and Santino came out.

He had shaved.

He wore the black suit with no tie, and he came down the steps with something small in his hand.

The talk on both sides of the lawn stopped.

He walked across the grass toward me, past his own men and past my cousins, and nobody in either family said a word.

I stood where I was.

He stopped an arm's length away.

"I owe you a speech," he said.

"You do."

"I'm not good at them."

"Then keep it short."

A cousin laughed. A Carraro man laughed a second later, and then the whole lawn relaxed.

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