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A look crosses her face that I can't read.

"All right," she says.

She leaves, and it's suddenly cold in the room. I stare at my shirt and throw a curse at my hard-on.

I'm so fucked.

* * *

My mother is the first to come up. She walks in without knocking, in her silver gray dress and Grandma's pearls, and watches me do my shirt buttons from the bottom up.

"You button your shirt the way you dress the bodies," she points out.

I stop with my hand on the third button. I didn't think anyone had ever noticed. It's how I work downstairs. Feet first, then upwards, collar last. I've done it that way since I was nineteen.

"Habit," I say.

"Mmm." She comes closer and doesn't fuss with anything in the room, which for her is a huge effort. "I've been to a great many weddings, Laszlo."

"I know."

"So I know what a groom looks like on the morning of his wedding and you don't look like one. You look like you're up to something." She stops in front of me. "You have managed to fool everyone and you got away with it, but I never thought you'd try it on me."

I could tell her the truth. I could tell her the doctor saved Papa's life, that I've been obsessing over her for seven years, that this wedding isn't what everyone thinks it is. It would be easy. She might be the only person alive I'd trust with it.

"Mama."

"Don't." She lifts a hand, and I notice the bags under her eyes that her makeup doesn't quite cover. "You'll tell me when you're ready like you always do."

She reaches up and does the collar for me, the last button.

"There," she says. "Now you look like a man who's getting married."

Then she walks to the door and stops with her hand on it.

"She's very beautiful, the doctor. But she doesn't look at you like she wants to be here." She doesn't turn around. "Sort that out, before it's all anyone notices."

She closes the door behind her and I exhale. My mother is right, I have to win Manon over.

I finish dressing. Pants, then suspenders. Shoes, laced.

Constantine comes in without knocking too. What is wrong with these people? He puts a glass of water on the windowsill where I'll absolutely knock it over.

"Henri came to me an hour ago. He’s not happy about Julian staying gone. I reminded him that’s what he signed." Constantine sits on the arm of the chair. "Told him he should keep a muzzle on his boy. But…"

"But?"

"But I told him you’re not unreasonable. You can revisit the terms when appropriate. For Manon. Right? " Constantine sits on the arm of the chair. "And he's still going to get up in that church and make a speech."

"I've already read it. He sent it over a week ago so I could approve it." I do the fifth button. "There's a line where he says he always knew she'd find a man who’d look after her."

Constantine doesn't laugh. He looks at the carpet for a while, then leaves.

He takes that in for a long moment. Then he pats the doorframe twice and goes back down.

My father comes up at eight-forty, tired after going up a flight of stairs. He's dressed in a gray suit that makes him look smaller somehow. Or maybe it’s all in my head..

"Your collar's done," he says, and I can tell he wanted to be the one to do it.