I Locked Two Rival Mob Heirs In, So Neither Lets Me Go novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Lanterns

The Hongwanji hung its lanterns for us on the first Saturday of March.

They ran in strings across the courtyard, white paper with red tassels.

The strings went from the temple roof to the old dance tower that nobody had taken down.

That morning I had gone into the temple office alone, with my mother's coffee can in my hands.

I took out the envelope and laid it on the desk.

"For my father's memorial fund," I said.

"His name is on the list from eight years ago."

The woman at the desk counted what was inside with her lips moving.

She looked up at me and said nothing, and wrote a receipt.

I walked out of the office lighter than I had been in eight years.

By noon the courtyard was full.

The Higas stood on the left, and the Rapozas stood on the right, and they had mixed.

I saw a Higa cousin handing a Rapoza child a paper cup of juice.

The night shift from the plant had come in their good shirts, and some of them had forgotten to take off their hairnets.

The loan club men stood in front with their caps in their hands.

My grandmother sat in the first row in her best black dress, with her cane across her lap.

My mother sat beside her, and beside my mother sat Dean's mother and Manny's mother, shoulder to shoulder, passing one handkerchief.

I wore my grandmother's white silk kimono with a gold obi.

My hair was up, and I carried plumeria from her yard.

Dean waited at the foot of the steps in a black suit with no tie.

Manny stood beside him in the cream linen jacket he had worn on the night of the blackout, with a flower behind his ear.

I had walked between these two men once with a flashlight and led them out of a room.

Now I walked the length of a courtyard toward them, and four hundred people watched me go.

I took the last step and stood between them.

The minister raised both hands.

"This temple has never blessed a union of three," he said.

"I looked through the sutras for a reason to refuse. I did not find one."

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