The Hat Lady's rise is magnificent and unhurried — the brim clears the back of the pew like a galleon's prow, and then the full cornflower-blue glory of her follows, immovable as weather. She does not look flustered. She does not look amused. She looks like a woman who has been waiting politely for her moment, and whose moment has now, at last, arrived. From somewhere behind the baptismal font, a small rustling betrays Flavio — who believed he had found an excellent hiding spot and is now revising that opinion. Aurora, still frozen with her fistful of birdseed, watches the Hat Lady with the expression of someone whose odds have just changed. Uncle Gianni, finding nothing but air where a boy used to be, glances up and sees the Hat Lady already in motion — and something in his moustache shifts from pursuer to understudy. The roses on the hat nod, steadily, forward.