The Don's Dying Wish novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: The Wedding at the Church

He sat down on the edge of my grandmother's bed with the envelope on his knees.

He didn't open it.

"Read it to me," he said. "I can't."

I sat down beside him and slit it with my thumbnail.

There was one sheet inside, folded twice.

The letters were huge and crooked, every line running uphill off the edge of the page.

A blind man's hand.

I read it out loud.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS YOU STOOD UP.

THE GUARINO GIRL'S GRANDMOTHER HAS MY WORD. SHE GIVES IT TO YOU WHEN YOU ARE MEASURED FOR A WEDDING. NOT FOR A BOX.

IF YOU KEEP HER, KEEP HER FOR YOURS.

SHE WILL NOT LET YOU WIN AT CARDS. LET HER.

I AM NOT SORRY ABOUT HER.

PAPA

Marcello took the sheet out of my hand.

He held it close to his face, the way his father used to hold things.

He ran his thumb over PAPA.

"He wrote this the day you took me out," he said. "While your grandmother measured him for the casket."

From the doorway, Amalia said, "Nobody watches an old woman work."

We both turned.

She was standing there with her arms crossed and her glasses on their chain.

"He made me swear on my husband's grave," she said. "Not to give it to you. He said you'd want to find it yourself." She sniffed. "So I put it under the tape and sent you to measure your own inseam. Men."

Marcello got up and crossed the room and put his arms around my grandmother.

She let him.

"Don't wrinkle me," she said into his shirt. "I've got a wedding."

We married on the last Saturday before Christmas, at the church on Christian Street.

The same church where his mother had her Mass.

The same church where he'd walked up the aisle to his father's casket.

This time the casket stand was gone, and the front was full of white poinsettias.

The old capo's wife had done the flowers and wouldn't let me pay.

Amalia walked me down the aisle in a black dress with a red rose on it.

"I'm not wearing white at my age," she'd said. "People will think I'm the bride."

The church was full.

The Families.

The widows and their kids.

The driver in his first good suit, with his grandmother on his arm.

The embalmer in his Navy dress blues, which I hadn't known he still had.

The Don's nurse in the front row, beside the empty place where his father would have sat.

When the music started, the whole church stood up.

All of them.

On his own legs, at the altar rail, Marcello was standing too.

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