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Domenico dresses beside me. Black suit, black tie, dark gray shirt. The uniform of grief, except on him it looks like armor. He doesn’t fidget with his cuffs or adjust his collar the way I’ve seen other men do when they’re uncomfortable.

He just stands in front of the mirror and becomes the man everyone expects to see, and the transformation is so seamless it’s almost frightening. Catching me watching him, he holds out his hand to me.

I take it. His palm is warm, his fingers closing around mine with a pressure that says, I’m here, without him having to say it at all.

“Ready?” he asks.

No. “Yes.”

I pick up my rosary from the dresser and wind the beads around my fingers before following Domenico out of the bedroom.

Donna meets us at the elevator with a travel mug of coffee and eyes that won’t quite meet mine. “For the car,” she says, pressing it into my hands. “There’s whiskey in it. Not enough to notice, but enough to help.”

I almost hug her, but settle for squeezing her forearm instead. “Thank you.”

She pats my hand with fingers that tremble slightly. “I’ll see you there.”

Vinny meets us at the car, and even though I can see he wants to say something, he doesn’t. Which I’m beyond grateful for.

Domenico gets into the back seat with me, keeping me flush against him throughout the drive. The city looks wrong through the car windows—too bright, too ordinary, people walking dogs and carrying coffee cups as if it’s any other day.

The temperature has dropped overnight; frost clings to the edges of windshields and the iron railings outside brownstones, and the sky is the particular pale, hard blue that only happens when the air is cold enough to hurt your lungs.

I sip the coffee. Donna wasn’t lying about the whiskey. It burns all the way down and settles in my stomach like a small, warm stone, and for half a block, I can pretend it’s enough.

Then Saint Benedict’s comes into view.

27

Kira

As Vinny parks the car and we all get out, my gaze sweeps across the same church where Paolo abandoned me, where Domenico claimed me.

Climbing the same steps, the memory of that day, which feels like a lifetime ago, hits so hard I actually stumble on the top step. Domenico’s hand finds my elbow, steadying me, and I grip his forearm because I need something solid to hold on to.

The rosary beads wound around the fingers of my other hand dig into my palm, and I loosen my grip before I snap them.

“I’m okay,” I murmur to myself.

The doors open before we reach them. Father Joseph stands on the threshold, and the look on his face—gentle and resigned, the obvious sorrow of a man who’s done this too many times—nearly undoes me.

He says nothing as he moves aside and lets us pass, though his hand brushes my shoulder as I go by, light enough that I might have imagined it.

Unlike on my wedding day, the people lining the pews aren’t strangers.

I recognize people from Saint Benedict’s who’ve known Mom and me for years. Women she used to talk to after Mass. People she worked alongside here. The older couple who always sat a few rows behind us and never failed to say hello.

There are faces I remember from Christmas services, church events, and ordinary Sundays when Mom was still Mom and none of this had happened yet.

Mixed among them are Domenico’s men. Except they don’t feel like strangers anymore either. How can they? They’re here because Paige Adams was my mom, and I’m a DeLuca, and that means something to them now.

Gio stands near the front, his arm around Carly’s waist. She’s in a black dress with a hat similar to mine, no veil, and when she sees me, her mouth tightens and her eyes go bright. She lifts her hand—just a small movement, fingers splayed—and I lift mine in return because that’s all I can manage.

Vinny peels away from us as we move down the aisle, taking up a position near the doors with his hands clasped in front of him and his eyes doing that constant, subtle sweep of the room that means he’s working even now.

The coffin sits at the front of the church, draped in a white pall, and the sight of it stops my breath. Mom’s in there. She’s in a box covered in white cloth, and I have to bury her today.

Domenico’s hand is at the small of my back as he walks beside me. But when my steps falter, he locks his arm around me. He doesn’t say ‘I’ve got you’ or ‘you can do this’ or any of the useless platitudes people always say.