Chapter 20: Elio's POV

Elio's POV

Emilio turned the house microphones back on with one hand, and the click of the switch carried through every speaker in the room.

I stood in the doorway of the booth with Livia behind me and the old phone in my fist.

Nobody in the ballroom had spoken since the old woman asked her question.

Dominic let go of the tablecloth.

He walked out from behind the head table and across the stage to the podium.

He took the microphone off its stand with both hands.

I had known him since we were six years old.

I had watched him lie to teachers and to priests.

He had never once looked afraid.

He looked afraid now.

He also looked like a man who had decided.

"I was driving," he said.

His voice came back off the walls.

"It was the ninth of June, twelve years ago. I took my father's Buick out of the garage, and I was drunk."

"So were Paolo and Emilio. So was the youngest of us."

He turned and looked at the old woman at the edge of the dance floor.

"Your son was sober. He asked me to pull over. He asked me four times, and I laughed at him."

Somebody near the front coughed and could not stop.

"I hit the rail on the bay road. He was in the back seat. He died there."

"I'd like to tell you he didn't suffer. I don't know if that's true, and I never will."

His voice shook for the first time.

"Every one of you cried for him at that funeral, and you cried for a hero who never existed. That was my doing."

He closed his eyes.

"There's a man in this room I called a liar on the steps of the church. His name is Elio Caprio."

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