From Scapegoat to Donna novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Ballroom

The ballroom at the Orsini hotel held four hundred guests, and I had chosen every one of them.

I stood outside the double doors in a plain ivory dress, with Marta fussing at my hem.

She wore a lemon-yellow suit and a cap to match, because I had told her she could wear whatever she liked.

"Stand up straight," Marta said. "You look like you're about to operate."

"I'm about to marry."

"Same face." She stepped back and wiped her eye with a knuckle. "Your father would have cried into his handkerchief."

"He would have asked what it cost."

"Then he'd have cried."

The doors opened.

Four hundred people rose, and the string quartet found the first bar and held it.

The old capo stood at the front on his stick, and the dock captain beside him. The technician's daughter was in the second row, in a blue dress, with her mother's pink phone in her lap.

At the end of the aisle, under a bank of white flowers, Tancredi waited in a black suit and no tie.

He was looking at me.

I had thought I might lose my nerve on the walk.

I didn't, and I walked the whole length of it alone.

At the altar the priest, an old man who had married half the families in the room, cleared his throat.

"Who gives this woman?"

It was the line for the Don, who sat in the first pew with his hands folded on his cane and his mouth already open.

I turned my head.

"No one does," I said. "I give myself."

A murmur went through the room.

The Don shut his mouth, and the corner of it twitched.

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