Page 111 of Night of Shadows
I take a long sip of the wine.
I say, "Are you okay?"
Lex says, "Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"I am sure."
"You broke a man's wrist in your wife's conference room today."
"Yes."
"In front of the federal prosecutor."
"Yes. Sarah will need a stiff drink."
"Sarah is going to write an after-action report that is going to make her boss very happy."
Lex's mouth twitches the way it does when I have made him almost laugh in a kitchen we are sitting in alone after a contractor came for me. It is small. It is real. It is the man who has been allowed to exist, in this kitchen, for fifty-six days now, and who is reaching across a kitchen island to me on a January Tuesday at 6:13 PM after the worst day my federal prosecution has produced in nine months, and the man is real and steady and present.
I say, "I want this to be over."
Lex says, "Six days."
"Six days."
I walk around the kitchen island. He stands up. He pulls me to him. He holds me. He doesn’t speak. The brownstone is the brownstone. The contractor is in federal custody. The Foley arrest is closing out. Reznikov Sr. is in St. Petersburg, hating us. Cormac is in his apartment eating Skittles. Eleni is two miles away with our daughter.
Six days.
I count them in my head while my Lex holds me in the kitchen.
Wednesday. Thursday. Friday. Saturday. Sunday. Monday. Tuesday.
Tuesday is the grand jury.
Six days.
Chapter 32
Lex
The Day Before
The day before the grand jury.
Maeve has completed 43 hours of preparation in the last six days. She did most of it remotely from the brownstone with Sarah Klein via video link, and the rest in person in a federal building conference room with a Marshal at the door. She’s rehearsed the parking-garage testimony so many times that the words come out clean. She’s rehearsed the names of the men. She’s rehearsed the description of what was done to the dead informant. The dead informant is named Vincent Marchetti. Maeve has been carrying his name since June. Tomorrow she’ll say it under oath in front of a grand jury, and the saying will be the closure of the case Maeve has been carrying since the parking garage on Tremont Street eight months ago.
She’s ready. She’s also vibrating beneath the readiness. I have been with her for fifty-six days, and I can read her register the way I read my brother's face.
It is 8:31 AM on a Monday in late January.
Nora is at the front door in dinosaur pajamas, a wool coat zipped over them, a small canvas school bag with an elephant patch slung crosswise over her chest, and purple snow boots.
"Daddy. Walking."
"It is twelve blocks, ‘agápi mou.’"
