The silence that followed Alessandro’s announcement of the wedding date was different than the ones before. It wasn’t the silence of dread or the silence of exhaustion; it was the silence of a grave. In one month, he would stand before a priest and a thousand witnesses to claim Marcella Vitiello. In one month, the legal trap would snap shut, and my son and I would become the permanent footnotes to his official life.

Alessandro spent the next few days in a state of manic preparation. He was ...