Eyes shifting anxiously in the direction of the kitchen and a steak growing cold, he swore to be ready and waiting for us if we came back at 2:00 P.M. When we did come back at two, he was clearly surprised to see us but yielded to the reminder of our appointment. “I’ll call him the morning of the ceremony,” Claudine whispered as we followed him to the church. The priest had changed from the morning’s green cassock to a black suit with the classic priest collar, and he led the way with a long, lopsided stride—not limping, exactly, but more as if he was more aggressive with one leg than the other. “And if he doesn’t answer, I know where he lives now. We’ll get him there.”

Eighty-two, I thought, smiling. I wondered if he kept Irish wolfhounds and would tell me my mother was a saint, an absolute saint, if I went to Confession. Inside the church, the air smelled of stone, thick and cool with a hypnotic ghost of incense. The priest disappeared in the back, searching for papers. Claudine pointed excitedly at the pews. Gorgeous and ancient, they had solid wood doors, worn by so many thousands of hands and so many years the mind boggled. Claudine opened and closed the little doors reverently. “Do you know how old these must be?” she breathed. “I don’t think they’ve made pews with doors on them for centuries. You hardly ever see them in churches anymore.”

I sat in one pew and had to brace my feet against the floor to keep from sliding off. Age had given these pews a steep slant. Doze off during a sermon and you would slide right onto the floor.

“Did you ask him about the rehearsal?” I asked her as the priest reappeared. I’d been campaigning for a rehearsal for some time, without much encouragement from any of the French.

She and Sébastien rolled their eyes at each other, but she turned to the priest. “Ma petite belle fille wanted to know if it would be possible to do a rehearsal before the wedding.”

I had not asked if it would be possible. I had asked when we could do one.

The old curé stared at us blankly. “Why does she need a rehearsal?”

Claudine and Sébastien both shrugged. “She’s American,” Sébastien said apologetically, as if that might explain it.

“To know what we’re doing, so as to avoid making idiots of ourselves in front of one hundred and fifty people,” I explained. “Basically.”

The curé fastened bright blue eyes on me in awe. “She speaks French?”

“Laura, in France we don’t go in for that kind of stuff,” Sébastien told me, not for the first time. “It’s a wedding, not a show.”