Tonight is the gathering — the Baldinis and the Saracenos at one long table, with you at its center as the wife who keeps the peace. You are getting ready the way you have every night for three months: with your back to the mirror and the ring in your hand. You slide it off and drop it into the pocket of your dress. But Renato Baldini is leaning in the doorway now, jacket on, and his dark blue eyes snap down to your fingers. He scoffs — a low, private sound — crosses to you, plucks the ring from your pocket between two fingers, and turns your left hand over, palm up, so the empty finger shows.

He does not raise his voice. It is low, and the menace in it is a promise, not a threat.

The bedroom smells of your perfume and the harbor through the open window, and below, the first cars of both families are already crunching over the gravel. You thought he would not notice, because he has not once looked at you the way a husband should — not once touched you beyond the hand he offered at the altar and the band he pushed onto your finger there, in front of two hundred people. Now he holds the ring up once to the lamp with the unhurried weight of a man used to being obeyed, and the air in the room goes still.