“I want to ask something before this ceremony continues,” she says, wiping at her cheeks with the back of her hand and laughing weakly through the tears. “I want Marco’s mother to come sit in the front. No. Actually…”
She turns back to you and her smile becomes brighter, braver, almost girlish in its tenderness.
“I want her to walk with me.”
A sound goes through the church then, impossible to name exactly because it is made of too many things at once. Surprise. Shock. Emotion. A shifting of old beliefs. Someone in the front row begins openly weeping. Another woman presses both hands to her mouth. Even Lara’s father, who had started this ceremony with the expression of a man prepared to inspect the whole day for flaws, looks stricken in the face, as if he has just realized wealth does not buy the most powerful kind of beauty after all.
