Widowed a Year, I Masked Up and Took Both of His Brothers novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: No Mask
A year later, on Carnival Friday, I walked into the same ballroom with no mask on.
The boy at the card table by the door had grown three inches.
He held out a gold mask with a hopeful face.
"Twenty dollars, ma'am."
"I have mine," I said, and showed him the one in my clutch.
I put a hundred in his hand for his trouble, and Tommy laughed on my left.
Tommy wore a black tuxedo and no mask, with a white rose in the buttonhole.
Vince walked on my right, in a tuxedo with the sleeves pushed up to show his hands, and a trumpet case under his arm.
I wore dark red.
I took a hand of each, Tommy's in my right, Vince's in my left.
We crossed the floor.
The band stopped on the stage, and the dancers stopped on the parquet, and the whole ballroom turned to watch.
Three hundred people looked at the widow.
This time I looked back.
At the head table, where the seating chart had once put me alone between two empty chairs, the aunts sat in a row.
A place was laid for each of us.
My mother waved from the third table, and my father raised an oyster fork.
The oldest aunt lifted her glass to me.
Nobody sat in the big chair at the end.
It had been taken away in the spring, and a long bench stood where it used to be.
Vince climbed the steps of the stage, and the quartet's trumpeter stepped aside without a word.
He lifted his horn, and the first slow notes of his mother's tune filled the hall.
Tommy put out his hand.
"Dance with me, Celie," he said.
We danced.
We danced for three songs, and then I took Vince's hand, and the two of them argued over me in Sicilian until I laughed.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Widowed a Year, I Masked Up and Took Both of His Brothers are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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