The suit was gray, a soft wool she had chosen eleven years ago for a cousin's wedding. It still fit, mostly. It smelled faintly of cedar. In the pocket he had placed a folded square of paper, covered in his cramped, slanted handwriting, the beginning of a speech he did not know how to finish.

On the nightstand sat a framed photograph. Margaret in 1984, hair wrapped in a scarf, laughing at someone just out of frame. He had always assumed it was him.

"I can't do this without you," he said aloud.

The house kept its silence.

Then, behind him, a knock on the open door. Eddie stood in the hallway in a rented tuxedo that was two sizes too small, his thick neck straining against the collar, his face red and miserable.

"Don't say a word," said Eddie.

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"I look like a bear in a bow tie."

"A very distinguished bear." Walter's mouth twitched. "Come here and fix this, would you?"

Eddie crossed the room with surprising delicacy. He took the ends of the tie in his big scarred fingers and worked the knot with the care of a man defusing something. He did not speak. When it was done, he smoothed the lapels once and stepped back.

"There," he said.

Walter looked at himself in the mirror. A thin old man in a gray suit looked back, white hair combed flat, eyes red-rimmed and clear. On his lapel, bright and small, was the brass pin.

"Walt," Eddie said, awkwardly. "I've been meaning to tell you. Forty-three years. You were the best friend I ever had. I never said so."

"Eddie."

"I'm saying it now because I don't trust myself to say it in front of three hundred people."

Walter turned from the mirror and put both hands on his friend's thick shoulders. For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Walter said, very quietly, "You didn't need to say it. I knew when you stood at my fence."

Eddie's jaw worked. He looked at the ceiling. "Damn it," he muttered. "I'll ruin the tux."

They laughed, and the laughter loosened something. Walter reached into the closet and took down a yellow raincoat, bright as a buttercup, worn at the cuffs and smelling faintly of lavender. He held it a moment against his chest.

"I thought I might carry this," he said.

"To a gala?"

"Over my arm. She'd have found it hilarious."

Eddie shrugged. "It's your funeral. I mean party."

Outside, a black sedan idled at the curb, sent by Helen Castellano, with a driver in a gray cap holding the door. The evening was cool and clear, the first stars pricking out above the rooftops. Walter paused on the porch and looked back through the open door at the dim hallway, the coat hooks, the photographs. He had never thought of the house as quiet. It had always been full of her, even in her absence.

Say what's true, Denise Pryce had told him.

He did not know yet what it was. But he stepped down into the evening with the yellow coat over his arm and his oldest friend at his side, and the black car swallowed them, and carried them toward the lights.

The Ballroom

The Lakeshore Grand Hotel had not seen so many people in one room since the mayor's wedding.

Three hundred guests filled the ballroom in a shimmer of silk and champagne, under chandeliers that shed a soft gold light across the polished floor. Waiters in white gloves moved between the tables with trays. A string quartet played something gentle near the dais. On a long wall hung a banner with the Aurelia wing and the words Forty Years of the Line.

At the center of the room, on a low circular stage, stood the Meridian, hidden beneath a black silk cover.

Brandon watched it from the service corridor.

He wore a dark pressed jacket with an embroidered patch on the breast, Aurelia Service Crew, and a pair of polished black shoes that pinched. Beside him, Gus fidgeted in a collared shirt buttoned to the throat, muttering about neckties, while Ofelia adjusted her cuffs and Terrence stood like a tower in the half-dark. They were the crew that would tend the car during the unveiling, ready to start the engine, roll the platform, and stay out of everyone's way.

"Hundred and forty-two thousand dollars," Gus whispered, nodding at the room. "That's what they spent on flowers. I could have bought a second shop."

"Hush," said Ofelia. "They're coming."