Page 107 of Night of Shadows
My mother goes very still.
She’s looking at me. The wet at the corners of her eyes finally crests the lid. She doesn’t wipe it. She lets it run. The Greek matriarch who has been wearing the navy dress since 9:00 AM has made a decision about what she’ll allow to happen at this table, and the decision is ‘not this. This I will not hold back.’
She says, "Have you told Maeve?"
"Not yet. I will tell her after the proposal. I will ask her then."
"You promised your ‘Yia-Yia’ in 2005."
"Yes."
"On the morning she died."
"Yes."
"Kalliope made you promise her two things."
I look at my mother.
"You knew."
"Of course, I knew. Your ‘Yia-Yia’told me what she had asked you. She told me on the day before she died. She told me because she wanted me to know what kind of woman to watch for in your life when you finally came home with one. She told me to wait. She told me you would know. She told me your wife would know."
My mother reaches across the table and takes my hand.
"I have been waiting twenty-one years to give you this blessing, ‘agóri mou.’ I have been waiting fifty-six days for this specific version of the asking. The blessing is yours. It has been yours since the day Maeve walked into my apartment and held my granddaughter the way a Greek mother holds another Greek mother's child — with the understanding that this child belongs to all of us now, and we are all of us responsible."
She squeezes my hand. Once. "Tell Maeve I love her."
"She told me to tell you the same."
My mother closes her eyes for one full second. When she opens them, the wet has stopped. She’s restored the navy dress’s architecture. The matriarch is back.
"Now," she says. "Eat the ‘kourabiedes.’ They will go stale by tomorrow."
I eat the ‘kourabiedes.’
? ? ?
Before I leave, my mother walks me to the door. She stops me in the foyer with her hand on my arm.
She says, in Greek, very quietly, "Show me the ring."
I take the velvet pouch out of my coat pocket. I open it. The ring sits on the small dark velvet square in my palm. The old European-cut diamond catches the foyer light.
My mother doesn’t pick it up.
She looks at it for a long second.
Then she says, "Niko had the inscription added in 1983."
"Yes."
"In secret."
"Yes."
"‘Yia-Yia’ didn’t know until after he died."
