TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART Page 18

  Grace was betting on Tommy too. After that night in Benny Gabrini’s living room, she wondered if they would make it. There seemed to be so many forces against them. But they held on, and now they were here. At what Reno called a family affair. Reno’s wife, Trina, was there. As the Maid of Honor, she walked in front of them. Gemma Jones, the woman Sal was dating, walked in front too, with the bridesmaids. Tommy’s groomsmen included Grace’s close friend Jamie, and Reno’s oldest son Jimmy Mack. They were already on the stage. Even Grace’s mother showed up, although their relationship was still a work in progress, and her step siblings came too. But when she looked around the room she didn’t see the who’s who in the wedding party, or the audience, nor did she see the opulence of the room itself. She saw Tommy.

  He stood on that stage in his sky-blue tux, looking so nervous, she thought with a smile, that he looked constipated. She knew what this day meant to him. It broke her heart when he came to her dressing room before the ceremony, to make sure, he said, that she hadn’t changed her mind and left him. Left him? It would be like leaving her heart, if she left Tommy.

  And when Reno finally handed her to Tommy, and she was standing beside him, the thought of not having him in her life was crystallized even more. She loved Tommy Gabrini. She thanked God for bringing a man like him into her life.

  Tommy looked at her with tears of joy in his eyes. And it had all crystallized for him too. He knew why he chose Grace. He knew it as if he had known it all along. It was a heart thing. Their hearts matched.

  And as the minister began the ceremony, and Tommy stood up there surrounded by Reno, Trina, and Jimmy Mack, and Sal and Gemma Jones, he knew they all were going to be just fine. With love like this, it would take a concerted effort, a monumental blunder, for them not to be.

  “I do,” he finally said when the minister asked him if he would take Grace McKinsey to be his lawfully wedded wife.

  “I do,” she said it too.

  And as the minister was still pronouncing them man and wife, Tommy was lifting Grace high up in the air, as if she was this magnificent prize he had won, and he was gloating like a kid.

  Even strong Reno clapped and laughed and wiped tears from his eyes. He looked at Trina, who was laughing and wiping too.

  They’d never seen Dapper Tom, not ever, look more dapper in all his life.