Chapter 7: Day Seven

At nine on the seventh night a hundred guests stood in the villa's grand hall with their phones in their hands.

A long table stood in the middle of the marble floor, covered in white linen.

On it lay a stack of papers, a silver pen, and a champagne bottle in an ice bucket.

I came in through the front doors in the dark green silk, and the room went loud.

"The Donna! The Donna!"

"Look at her. She came in on her own two feet!"

Tommaso stood at the head of the table in a black tuxedo.

He opened his arms.

"You see?" he told the room. "I said she would."

Ilaria stood beside him in cream satin.

She wore my grandmother's pearls, the ones I had left in the bedroom safe.

She saw me looking and touched them, shyly.

"Madre said I could," she whispered.

I did not answer.

The family's lawyer stood at the far end of the table with a leather folder under his arm.

He watched me and did not smile.

I gave him a small nod. He did not return it.

"Time!" a friend shouted. "Ten minutes to midnight, and the Donna has not cried!"

"Count it down!" someone else called.

A hundred phones came up to film.

They had done this for three years. They knew the order of it, and they loved it.

I walked to the table and stood opposite my husband.

He looked at me with his old, warm face, the one that had made me feel chosen at twenty-five.

"Amore," he said softly, so only I heard. "Tonight you sign, and tomorrow you're home. I swear it."

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