Chương 11
The city had no idea a wedding had ended three floors beneath them.
Rosalie checked the time.
“Alessandro.”
“I know.”
He stood.
Livia kept hold of his hand for another second before releasing it herself.
“Are people going to be mad at you?”
“Yes.”
“Because of money?”
“Some.”
“Because they came here?”
“Some.”
“Because they like Bianca?”
“Yes.”
Livia frowned.
“What are you going to do?”
He adjusted his crooked tie, then stopped and pulled it off entirely.
“Tell them the wedding isn’t happening.”
“That’s it?”
“I’ll apologize.”
“For canceling?”
“For bringing them here for something I should have stopped earlier.”
Rosalie looked at him.
The sentence cost him something.
Livia seemed to hear that.
“Are you scared?”
Alessandro folded the tie into his pocket.
“Yes.”
She looked surprised.
“You don’t look scared.”
“That’s one of my tricks.”
“Is it a good trick?”
“Sometimes.”
She thought about that.
“Don’t lie downstairs.”
He looked at her.
“I won’t.”
She pointed toward the door.
“And don’t say it was all Bianca.”
Rosalie’s eyebrows rose.
Alessandro stayed still.
Livia looked down at her knees.
“You said you were already thinking about leaving.”
“Yes.”
“So it wasn’t all today.”
“No.”
“And you didn’t tell her.”
“No.”
Livia lifted her eyes.
“Then say that.”
Alessandro stood there, unable to answer for a second.
Rosalie leaned back in the chair and watched him receive instructions in honesty from a seven-year-old wearing a towel covered in bits of hair.
Livia nodded.
He walked to the door.
“Daddy.”
He turned.
She touched the shortened side of her head.
“Do you hate it?”
His face tightened.
“No.”
“The hair.”
“I know.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She watched him closely.
He came back across the room, crouched in front of her, and touched one short strand only after she nodded.
“I hate how it happened.”
Livia looked at him.
“But I don’t hate this.”
She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against his.
He closed his eyes.
“Okay.”
Then she whispered, “Go before Grandma starts the wedding without you.”
He laughed quietly.
“That is not impossible.”
Rosalie opened the door for him.
He stepped into the hallway and looked back once.
Livia had turned toward the mirror again.
This time she was not touching the missing length.
She was moving her head from side to side, watching the new ends swing against her cheeks.
Alessandro closed the door gently behind him.
Downstairs, two hundred guests were waiting for an explanation.
For the first time all day, he knew that the most important person had already heard one.
When Alessandro stepped into the ballroom, conversations thinned in uneven pockets rather than stopping all at once.
People near the doors noticed him first.
Then heads began turning farther into the room, carried by whispers that moved faster than any formal announcement could have.
The musicians had already stopped playing.
A violinist was placing her instrument into its case near the small platform where the ceremony was supposed to begin.
Marcy stood beside the microphone with one hand pressed to her headset.
She met Alessandro’s eyes and gave a barely visible nod.
His mother was seated in the second row.
She had not stayed there politely.
She had turned sideways in her chair so she could stare directly toward Bianca’s family across the aisle.
Alessandro caught her eye and pointed one finger downward.
Stay seated.
She looked offended by the suggestion that she required instruction.
Then, remarkably, she obeyed.
Vittorio entered behind Alessandro but remained near the back wall.
He did not sit with his wife.
Bianca’s mother had not come down.
Neither had Bianca.
That absence changed the room more than Alessandro’s arrival did.
Several guests glanced toward the doors behind him, waiting for the bride.
He climbed the two shallow steps to the platform.
The floral arch behind him had taken three meetings, seventeen emails, and an argument about whether white roses looked “too funeral.”
He had not cared then.
He cared even less now.
Marcy handed him the microphone.
“You don’t have to take questions.”
He looked at her.
“People ask questions at canceled weddings?”
“People ask questions at funerals.”
“That sounds worse.”
“It is.”
Then she stepped away.
Alessandro looked out at two hundred people arranged in rows and around dinner tables beyond the aisle.
Friends from work.
Cousins he barely saw.
Bianca’s extended family.
Neighbors.
His mother’s friends.
People who had flown in from three states and one other country.
People who had bought clothes for the occasion.
People who had booked hotel rooms.
People who had spent the morning congratulating him.
He suddenly understood why leaving through a side door had seemed attractive.
He also understood why he could not do it.
“Thank you for being here.”
The microphone carried his voice farther than he expected.
A few people straightened.
Someone near the back stopped whispering.
“There won’t be a wedding today.”
A woman in the front row covered her mouth.
A man at one of the tables quietly said, “Jesus.”
Alessandro continued.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked down once at the microphone.
“There are private reasons I’m not going to discuss in this room.”
Several faces shifted with immediate disappointment.
He almost resented them for it.
Then he remembered that people had come because he invited them into what was supposed to be a public promise.
They had not created this mess.
“I also want to be clear about something.”
His mother sat very still.
“The decision to cancel belongs to me.”
Vittorio’s expression changed at the back of the ballroom.
Alessandro saw it and kept going.
“I had doubts before this morning.”
A ripple moved through the room.
“I should have addressed them before today.”
He swallowed.
“I didn’t.”
The silence became heavier.
“That was unfair to Bianca.”
His mother’s eyebrows rose.
Vittorio looked down.
“I let this reach a point where families traveled, vendors worked, and everyone showed up expecting something I was no longer sure I could promise honestly.”
He paused.
May you like
“That part is mine.”
A woman near the aisle glanced at her husband.
