Chapter 18: If Anyone Objects

The cathedral doors were closed, and Fausta's hand was on my arm.

She had worn her black funeral dress, her good pearls and her wedding ring.

She had also brought the shotgun to the church, in a long flower box, and left it with the driver.

"Breathe in," she said. "You walk when I walk."

Through the carved wood I could hear the organ playing, thin and sweet, and the shuffle of two hundred people settling into pews.

I knew exactly where each of them sat.

The capos took the left side, the Calderara cousins the right, and my mother had the front row on the aisle, where she had always sat.

The bloodied gown hung over my left arm, folded once, with the stain turned outward.

Ugo's voice murmured in my ear through the small earpiece he had pressed into it.

"The booth is mine," he said. "Wait for the priest."

The organ stopped.

I heard the priest begin to speak, very far away.

I heard the words that come in the middle of every Catholic wedding.

"If anyone here knows a reason why these two should not be joined," he said, "let them speak now."

"Now," Ugo said.

Fausta pushed the doors open with both hands.

They were heavy, and they swung wide, and the daylight fell in behind us.

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