Dusk fell. Lights came on. Mario carried the sleeping Jennifer in his arms. They passed the marble column again on their way back. It looked different at night.
Yellow lights raked the column’s length, throwing the carvings into sharper relief, their stacked shadows twisting upwards like smoke. Before her, Cecilia could see the back of Mario’s head leaning gently into Jennifer’s, the child’s head lying on her father’s shoulder. Cecilia remembered the wedding they just saw and had a vision of her husband, walking their daughter down the aisle, barely able to hold back tears. But it would not be Mario who would give their daughter away.
The task would fall to Bernardo, chosen by Cecilia to stand in for her departed husband, gone too soon they said, the youngest one but the first to pass on
