Untouched Vows

Continued…

My father sets down his glass without drinking. One chair leg scrapes the floor, then another. Around me, people are rising. I don’t. Every person who has spent the evening avoiding the head of the table now looks directly at it.

Dante crosses the room without hurrying. He acknowledges his family, then mine, with the same brief inclination of his head. No apology for keeping either waiting.

He reaches his chair before he looks at me.

His attention goes first to the agreement in front of me, then to the pen at my hand, then to the wet half-ring beside my father’s glass. The corner of the contract beneath my palm is still damp. He does not inspect my dress or search my face for gratitude. He looks at me the way he looked at the contract, without assuming anyone else has summarized it correctly.

I stay where I am. Dante notices. The only sign is a pause before he turns to the table.

“Please,” he says.

Everyone sits. Dante does not tell me to stand or ask why I didn’t already. He waits until the others are seated before taking his own chair. I add that to what I know about him, which aside from hushed conversations punctuated with Italian curse words, isn’t much.

My father performs the introduction. “Dante Benedetti. My eldest daughter, Livia.”

“I know who Livia Vitale is,” Dante says.

“That puts you ahead of several people here.”

The corner of his mouth moves, then settles.

My father leans forward. “She understands what this agreement guarantees. She is grateful for what it means for Sofia.”

My choice, laundered and returned as his mercy.

Dante looks at me rather than him. “Are you?”

“Grateful?” I ask. “For being selected after every cheaper solution failed? Immeasurably.”

My father’s fingers close around the stem of his glass.

Dante’s gaze remains on me. “You don’t look afraid.”

My father turns sharply. The lawyer beside him finds sudden work in the margin of his document.

I smooth the edge of my linen napkin, resting on the table by my hands, “I simply wasn’t aware fear was part of the dress code.”

This time, he smiles. Briefly, unwillingly. “You chose to be here,” he says.

“I chose Sofia not to be here,” I corrected, “There is a difference.”

Dante draws his copy of the agreement toward him but leaves his pen capped. “Read it out loud,” he tells the lawyers. “All of it.”

Pages turn. The provisions proceed one by one: territory, revenue, access, penalties. Three years of funerals reduced to language neat enough for paper.

No one interrupts. I barely breathe.

When the lawyer reaches the rider behind the final page, his voice changes. Only slightly, but this table has been listening for weakness all night. “The marriage is to remain unconsummated for one year. If the truce collapses during that period, either spouse may seek an immediate annulment.”

One year unconsummated, the lawyer says. Dante doesn’t look at the rider. He looks at me. Our eyes lock and my cheeks flush involuntarily. The clause is meant to keep an exit open; under his gaze, for one unwelcome second, I think only of what it asks us not to do.