My Stepsister Ran From the Wedding, So My Stepmother Sold Me to the Man Who Hates Her Mother novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Hurricane-Eve Table

Nobody stopped the accordion.

The old man in the yellow slicker played on for half a verse, until he looked down the table and let it die in a long wheeze.

Carmela sat at the foot with her hands folded on the cloth and her handbag in her lap.

Rain was running off her hair and down her neck into the navy silk, and she did not touch it.

"What a lovely table," she said. "Agata. You always did know how to feed a dock."

"You're not invited," said Agata.

"Nobody ever sent me a card, but I've never missed a Bellanca supper in nineteen years." Carmela's voice was warm and level. "I thought I'd come and see my girls."

Priscilla made a small sound beside me.

I put my hand on her wrist under the table.

"They aren't yours," I said.

Carmela turned her head.

"Nina, darling. You look wonderful. Marriage suits you."

"My father's here," I said. "He's been watching you walk down this dock for a minute and a half."

My father's good hand had closed on the arm of his chair.

He was looking at his wife.

I saw his whole face working, the slack side and the live one, trying to move.

"Ignazio," said Carmela, and for the first time she did not smile. "You ought to be in bed."

"Don't speak to him," said Marcello.

He had not raised his voice.

He had risen at the head of the far half of the table, with his hands on the back of a chair.

Every captain in that shed was looking at him.

"You're a guest of my aunt's," he said. "You'll say what she gives you leave to say."

Agata laid down her fork.

"I'll give her leave," she said. "Sit, Marcello."

He sat.

Agata rose from the cushion at the head of the table.

She was a very small woman in a black cardigan, and the lanterns threw her shadow long across the boards behind her.

"Nineteen years ago this month," she said, "Marcello's father was shot on this dock."

She said it slowly, so the back of the shed could hear.

"The dock has a name for what happened. The name is wrong, and I let it stand, and every man at this table has said it at some funeral." She looked down the long row of faces. "Delia Voss did not sell my nephew's father's schedule. She was a frightened girl who came to my door in the afternoon, and she left her raincoat on my step."

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