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“Yeah.”

“Got it. Compris. Understood.”

“Bien.” Papa smiles at him.

“Well, good. We’re getting married,” I say.

“You have booked the church, haven’t you?” Helen asks me. “I can’t rely on this one to do the sensible thing. But you look like you’ve been around the block at least once or twice.”

I look at Levi. “We were just going to do it at the courthouse.”

There is an identical expression of shock and dismay that spreads through both women’s faces. “My son, marry in a courthouse?” my mother says indignantly.

“The fuck he will,” Helen says.

“That’s a place for thieves and hookers,” my mother says. “Have you not tried to find a church?”

“He was always like this,” Helen says, turning to my mother. “One day he says, Momma, I’m joining the Army. And I said, When you doing that? He says, Tomorrow at four in the morning. Just never plans ahead about the little things. The big things, he’ll sort out. But the little things?”

“And mine! He keeps a boyfriend for a year or two and I always thought, maybe this one. But no. And then, he decides, I’m sick of Canada, I’ll move to America. And me, his poor mother, not a thought until he decides to run away. I’m lucky he didn’t go to Las Vegas and send me a picture of him being married by Elvis.”

Helen glares at Levi. “Levi Brayden Knight, you are not being married by Elvis Presley. I want flowers, I want stained glass. I want a damned miracle. You know what we need? We need a War Room.”

“Une salle de guerre,” my mother repeats. “We’ll use that dining table.” She stands. “Madame, I believe we have our work cut out for us.” She switches to French. “Bastien, put the coffee on. Michel, make something to eat. Sandrine, start calling the cousins. Levi, I need notebooks and pens. And coffee.” She claps her hands twice and goes back to English. “Madame, let’s show these boys how it’s done.”

“What did she say?” Levi whispers to me. “Why is she talking to me in French?”

My father touches my sleeve as the living room empties out. “What the hell is going on?” he demands in French. “Why was everyone so upset? And why does your mother need a War Room?”

Chapter thirty

Levi

By the afternoon, Momma and Annette Saint-Jacques have formed a team at Bastien’s dining room table—I have to start calling it our dining room table—and Michel is now trying to teach me to say dirty things in French to Bastien, which makes Bastien blush beautifully and hiss at him in French to stop, but I don’t mind. Michel is a hearty, plain-spoken man, and he clearly loves his brother. And our doorbell has rung so much with new arrivals that Bastien taped a sign to the door that says, “Just come on in. Don’t bother knocking.”

“Levi! What are you wearing?” Annette shouts from the dining room.

“Service uniform.”

“What color is it?”

“Navy blue.”

She throws up her hands and purses her lips, blowing out her cheeks, a particularly Gallic expression that Bastien does when he doesn’t know something. He had to explain to me what it meant. “Rien ne marche,” she declares. “Non,” she says, looking over the rim of her reading glasses at the suit and tie Bastien is dangling over the banisters. “It must now match with navy blue.”

“Do you take gay weddings?” Momma says into her phone. She pauses and listens. “Well, it’s the goddamned law. You should. God bless you.” She hangs up. “Levi, I wanna talk to you.”

“Cou-cou!” Delphine calls in, opening the door.

“Shoes!” I call before she comes further in.

“Merde!” she swears and takes off her shoes, leaving them in the overflowing rack next to the doors. “I come bearing allies!”

“Maman!” Bastien calls down the stairs. “This vest with a black suit?”

“Levi!” Momma says in a sharp tone.

Bastien’s mother looks up at him. “Black makes you look like an undertaker. Keep the vest with something softer.” She’s trying to speak in English for my benefit, and I appreciate it.