Chapter 305 She says okay

Then, slowly, he began to laugh. It was a deep, delighted, astonished sound. He put his head back, and it rolled out of him, bigger and bigger, ringing off the white walls. A guard in the hallway glanced in, wide-eyed, and the Don did not even notice. He pressed his good hand to his chest and shook with it.

"Okay," he repeated. "She says okay."

He wiped his eyes.

"Twenty years, Helena. Twenty years I waited, and you say okay." He shook his head, still grinning. "My God. You are the most extraordinary woman who ever lived."

He did not ask her again for the words. He was very happy. He had been given something he had stopped hoping for, and he held it in both hands, blinking, like a boy who had been handed a gift he did not dare ask for. She let him. It was easier than saying it.

He turned to the door.

"Call the priest," he said to the nearest guard. "The one at the cathedral. And the florist. And the tailor, and my lawyer, and every man who can lift a chair." His voice rang. "We will have the wedding in two days."

"Two days, Boss?"

"I cannot wait longer than that." The guard gaped, then bowed and ran.

The Don turned back. He crossed the room and stopped at the foot of the bed. He looked down at the sleeping man for a moment, at the gray in his hair and the green line on the screen. Something passed over his face. It might have been guilt. It might have been love. It was too quick to name.

He lifted his eyes to the doctor, who had been standing against the wall. "Begin," he said.

"Now, Don?"

"Now. Start the process. Bring him up." His voice was rough. "Carefully, twenty years is a long time."

The doctor nodded and bent to the machine.

—--

After that, everything happened too fast.

Helena could not have said afterward what order it came in. The doctor’s hands moving over the controls. A new light on the screen. A nurse with a tray. A whispered word, and the Don’s arm around her shoulders, and the cold air of the van again, and the black road under the black sky.

Somewhere in the middle of it, a phone rang, and the Don answered with a laugh, and said her name as if it were a gift.

She sat in the back seat with her hands in her lap and watched it all slide past. She felt as if she were standing a little to one side of her own body, watching a woman who looked like her.

By morning, the house was full of strangers.

There were tailors with pins in their mouths. There were seamstresses with measuring tapes, and a hairdresser who spoke in a tiny, frightened voice, and a florist who kept asking white or ivory until Helena wanted to scream.

Everything in the house was being polished. The marble in the grand hall, which had been scrubbed clean of blood only the day before, was being scrubbed again. Long white ribbons hung from the stair rail. A man on a ladder was fixing the chandelier.

And through it all, the guards.

They stood at every door. They stood in the hallway outside her room, and in the corner of the dressing salon, and behind the florist’s table. They did not speak, and they did not look at her. But whichever way she turned, there was a white suit at the edge of her sight.

Keeping an eye on me, she thought.

She did not mind. She was not going anywhere. Somewhere in a quiet white room, a man was slowly waking from twenty years of sleep, and every hour she spent here was an hour closer to the moment he opened his eyes.

"Lift your arms, Madam." Helena lifted her arms.

She stood in the middle of her dressing room in a slip of pale silk, with three women kneeling around her feet. A long mirror stood against the wall. In it, she saw a woman with a white face and a smooth, empty smile, and a gown being lowered over her head like a cloud.

It was beautiful. It was ivory satin, plain and heavy, with long sleeves and a high neck and a train that rippled across the floor. The seamstresses sighed over it. They tucked and pinned and stepped back and sighed again.

Helena looked at herself and felt nothing at all. A bride, she thought. Again.

She thought of her wedding. She thought of Kontino, in a garden, in a green coat, laughing at something she had said. She thought of Sienna as a baby, asleep on her shoulder, with one small fist around a lock of her hair.

The seamstress tugged the last button into place. "There," she breathed. "Perfect." Helena did not answer. The door opened. Carina came in without knocking.

She was dressed for the day, in a plain gray dress with a high collar. She moved a little stiffly, and her face was still pale. But her eyes were clear, and she walked in with her head up, like a girl who had decided something.

The three women glanced at her and quickly looked away. The nearest guard shifted his weight.

Carina stopped in the middle of the room.

She looked at Helena in the mirror. She looked at the ivory gown, and the long train, and the white, set face above it. She looked for a long time, with her head slightly tilted, as if she were studying a painting.

"Well," she said. Her voice was dry and even.

"Twenty years, and you finally said yes." She glanced at the dress. "The longest dating ever." The seamstress made a small choking sound.

Nobody breathed. Helena stared at Carina’s reflection.

She had known the girl since she was small. She had watched her stand beside the Don in a white dress, eyes lowered, hands folded, saying yes, Father, and no, Father, and nothing else. She had never once heard her make a joke. She had never heard her laugh. She had begun to think there was nothing behind that smooth, careful face but obedience.

And now this.

It was so dry. It was so unexpected. It was a small, cold, sharp-edged thing, dropped into the middle of a room full of silk and ribbon, and it hung there glinting.

Something rose in Helena’s chest.

It came up from a place she had thought was empty. It was warm, and it hurt, and it was very nearly laughter. She pressed her lips together. Her shoulders shook once. Her eyes filled again, but not with grief this time.

"Yes," she said, and her voice wobbled. "Yes... finally..."

Carina’s mouth twitched. It was the smallest movement in the world. It was gone in a breath. But Helena saw it in the mirror, and she understood, with a sudden, startling clearness, that she was not alone in this house.