Now they were both beginning to look disgusted with me. I tried again. “You do see how an atheist might be considered unsuitable for the role.”

Sébastien grabbed another concrete block out of the wheelbarrow in one surge of outrage. “You mean, according to your rules, I’ll never get to be anyone’s godfather? How unfair!” He tossed the concrete block to the ground sulkily. “This is what I hate about religion!”

I gave up after that and dismissed the cousin’s warning as unfounded.

Thirty-five

Three days before the wedding.

“I wonder where Sue and Dwayne are,” I said, slicing peppers. We had spent the day before in Paris with our American guests and driven back late at night, after a skating trip on the Seine. Sue and Dwayne had planned to follow today, leaving Paris early that morning to make the ninety-minute trip.

“I wonder if the person who owns that property is going to pick those mirabelles,” Colette said, her comic, freckled face crunched up as she gazed out the window. “It sure doesn’t look like it.”

“They’re announcing rain for your wedding day,” Mamie said.

“Did we get more beer?” Bruno came in, in a blue workman’s outfit dusted with plaster. “There are only a few left in the fridge. Where did you girls put it, down in the cellar?”

“Try one of my cherries.” Jean-Charles, covered in grease from the cars, hauled down the jar. “That’ll wake you up.”

“But they would call surely, if they got lost,” I said. “Bruno, you left your cell phone on, didn’t you?”

“Because the wind’s picking up,” Colette said. “I’d hate to see those mirabelles lost in a storm.”

“Rain and hail,” Mamie said. “For your wedding day.”

“Well, who needs beer when it’s about time for aperitifs, anyway?” Bruno said. “Lunch is almost ready.”

Titi stepped in and helped himself to one of Jean-Charles’s cherries. “First we’d better get that dance floor covered. It’s going to rain.” He, Sébastien, Bruno, and Jean-Charles grabbed the last four refrigerated beers and hurried out.

“And gale-force winds,” Mamie said. “All day.” She whisked a pepper out of my hand, picked up the other four I had lined up to cut, and carried them over to the sink, where she started washing them again. I put my knife back down on the cutting board and got up to gaze over Colette’s shoulder at the approaching storm. The absentee landowner’s dozen mirabelliers lined the opposite side of the fence, branches draping to the ground under the weight of tiny, golden, perfect fruit. We all looked at the clouds whipping in.

“I think we should pick them,” I told Colette. “What a criminal waste.”