It's my wild blood that caused this. The blood Lu got from me, Mifalda thought. But she knew this wasn't just about blood. I was too strict with Lu. I didn't give her enough attention so she looked for it in other places. And most damning of all: I let her see that I wasn't happy with a woman's place in life.

Mifalda dragged herself out of bed. Her body felt heavy, and difficult to move—it was hard to remember that only a couple of days ago she'd been bustling around her kitchen, canning her tomatoes. She started to dress. She loosened her long hair out of its nighttime braid, brushed it, and pinned it in a bun at the nape of her neck. Next came the corset to give a semblance of a waistline to a figure that had spread over the years, since there was no man to keep it for. And finally her housedress, which she would change later in the morning before the boy came to take them to his family. She reached into her closet and pulled out the dress she'd bought to wear for her twentieth wedding anniversary. Her husband had wanted to have a big party at a social hall, which she had thought silly when their twenty-fifth was only five years away. But he had died before they reached their twenty-third, so she was glad she hadn't said anything.

The dress was pale lavender, made of a jacquard silk—you couldn't find such a fabric in the shops today, with the war on—and it still fit. She knew because she had already tried it on. She wasn't going to meet the mother of the boy who was going to marry her daughter wearing a dress that was too tight. And she would wear the hat with little violets on it that had been made to go with the dress. She would show the Gasparis that they were dealing with a woman of dignity … a woman with pride …

A woman whose daughter gave herself to their son like a common whore!

Suddenly Mifalda was dizzy. She dropped the dress on the floor, sat on the side of the bed, and bent over as far as the corset would let her. She stayed that way until the light-headedness passed, and then she picked the dress up from the floor, brushed it off, and spread it on the bed.