Ashamed of his own self-indulgence, he focused on Nikolas standing beside the young and beautiful Delfinia at the altar. This was his little boy, now a man, and Josef marvelled that he and Evangelina could create someone so handsome, intelligent and respectful and cursed himself for allowing whimsical thoughts of his own youth to cloud his many blessings. As Josef looked with admiration at his son, what he saw also took him by surprise. He had not noticed before that Nikolas’s hair was beginning to recede and he became acutely aware that, at forty, he was much older than Josef had been on his own wedding day. But what surprised him even more and disturbed him was that he saw sorrow in his son’s eyes. Was it because Nikolas already felt the stirrings of age, of time slipping away? Did he al
