"Thank you," I managed finally, against her shoulder. "That means more than I can tell you."
She patted my back firmly, the way women patted backs when they were deciding not to cry. "Enough of that," she said, pulling back and looking at me with bright eyes that she blinked once, hard. "Let's find the dress."
It was in the large closet in the master bedroom, wrapped in cloth and kept with the particular care of something that mattered. Lucia lifted it out and held it up and I understood immediately why she'd kept it. The lace bodice was a higher neck with long sleeves, intricate and fine, the kind of work that was a dying art even when it had been made. The skirt was heavy satin, full and elegant, and she turned it around to show me the buttons down the back, each one covered in the same lace as the bodice.
"The lace was made in Venice," she said. "It took three months."
"Lucia." I looked at the dress and then at her. "Are you sure? This is--"
"There is nobody else," she said simply. “I would have loved Eleanor to wear it, but that wasn’t her plan, and this dress was made to be worn on a day that mattered, and today matters." She hung it carefully on the rack and looked at me with a warmth that had nothing performed in it. "Let me do this."
I nodded, because I didn't trust my voice entirely.
The morning moved quickly after that, in the particular way of mornings with a fixed point at the end of them. A woman arrived to do hair, someone Lucia trusted, quiet and efficient, and I sat in front of the mirror and watched myself be transformed incrementally from the woman who had crossed an ocean alone into something I wasn't sure I recognized but wasn't sure I minded. My hair went up, which I hadn't expected and then couldn't imagine any other way. Small pieces left loose around my face.
When it was time for the dress, Lucia helped me into it with the practiced patience of a woman who understood that things worth doing were worth doing carefully. The buttons up the back took time, each one, and the room was quiet while she did them, and I stood in front of the long mirror and looked at myself in her dress and thought about everything that had led to this morning and found that I couldn't reduce it to anything simple.
"Do you think he'll like it?" The question came out before I'd decided to ask it, and I felt my face warm slightly at my own transparency.
Lucia appeared behind me in the mirror, her hands coming to rest on my shoulders, and her smile was the smile of a woman who knew something she wasn't going to say directly. "I think he'll love it," she said. "And I think you already know that."
I looked at my own face in the mirror and decided not to argue with her.
Emilio knocked and opened the door and stopped when he saw me, and the expression on his face was unguarded enough that it startled a small laugh out of me. "Stunning," he said, with the simple directness of a man who didn't bother with flattery and therefore meant it when he said something. "Everyone is ready."
I walked out of the room on Lucia's arm and down the stairs and through the hallways that I had learned over five days, pastthe room full of photographs and the kitchen and the door to the library where last night I had said yes in the lamplight, and into the great room that had been turned into something I hadn't expected.
Flowers everywhere, white and full, and tulle along the windows, and candles on every surface, and the whole room soft with it, intimate rather than grand. Dante was in a large chair to the side, upright and dressed and looking better than he had any right to look, and he caught my eye and smiled and I felt something settle in my chest.
And standing at the front of the room in a tuxedo that fit him the way good things fit people they were made for, was Constantine.
He looked up when his father stopped talking and his mouth opened slightly, and he closed it, and looked at me with an expression I was keeping for myself, private and specific, not for anyone else in the room. I walked toward him and he watched me come the whole way, and when I reached him he leaned down slightly and said quietly, "That's my mother's dress," and I nodded because my voice wasn't reliable, and he said, even more quietly, "You look beautiful," and I believed him completely.
The priest had apparently not received the memo about urgency, because he talked about love and marriage with the leisurely thoroughness of a man with nowhere else to be, and I stood beside Constantine and listened and thought that some of what he was saying was actually true, which surprised me.
"Miss Avola, would you say your vows?"
I turned to face him. He was looking at me with the focused attention he gave everything, complete and present, and I thought about the library last night and the kitchen on the first morning and the floor of his office and the car and all the small specific things I had learned about this man in five days that had somehow added up to this moment.
"I, Cecelia Angelina Avola, take you Constantine Dante Venosa, as my wedded husband," I said. My hands were shaking and he held them tighter, and I steadied. "I promise to love and cherish you as long as we shall live. I pledge my loyalty to your family and vow to honor you all my days."
He said his vows in a voice that didn't waver, looking at me the entire time, and I thought that whatever else was true about this situation, this man meant what he said, and that was not a small thing.
"I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your bride."
We both went still. Neither of us had thought about this part, or if we had we hadn't thought about it out loud, and the moment had a quality of mutual recognition to it that I might have laughed at under different circumstances. He moved closer and I closed my eyes and he brushed his lips against mine, barely a kiss, the most careful possible version of one, and my heart did something that had no interest in being careful at all.
The room applauded. I opened my eyes and looked up at my husband.
"Congratulations, son." Dante reached out and Constantine took his hand, and then Dante looked at me. "Welcome to our family, Cecelia." He opened his arms and I leaned down and held him gently, this man who’d talked about everything and nothing, told me that home was the place that had room for you, and I whispered thank you against his shoulder and meant it for everything.
Lucia hugged me next, tight and warm, and then Constantine was at my elbow. "Mother, Father, I'd like a moment with Cecelia." They both nodded with expressions that were entirely too knowing, and he took my hand and led me to the library.
He closed the door and the noise of the room behind us softened to something distant, and we were in the room wherelast night I had said yes in the lamplight, and it was different now in ways I was still taking the measure of.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"I'm fine." I looked at him in his tuxedo in the library and thought that fine was a considerable understatement but that I didn't have more precise language available at the moment. "Are you?"
