Page 116 of Night of Shadows
She closes the drawer.
She opens the laptop.
She gets back to work.
I stand in the hallway with the phone against my ear and Petrov on the other end, and I do not interrupt. I do not enter the room. I do not ask her about it. I do not, when I come back into the office twenty minutes later with a fresh coffee for her, mention that I saw her open the drawer.
She’s been waiting a long time to be exactly who she is in front of me.
What she’s doing right now is being it.
I am not going to ask her to share the part of it that is hers.
? ? ?
That night, Maeve takes a long bath. I make dinner. We eat. She calls Eleni and asks her to keep Nora again tomorrow night. Eleni says yes before Maeve has finished the question.
At 9:47 PM, Maeve says, "I want to go to bed."
We go to bed.
She’s in my old T-shirt. Her hair is wet from the bath. She lies against my ribs the way she’s been lying against my ribs for fifty-six days. Her hand is on my collarbone. The small gold chain I gave her on Day thirty-one is at the base of her throat. She’s not taken it off in thirty-eight days.
I do not sleep.
I lie awake watching the ceiling and the woman against my ribs and the slow rise and fall of her breathing as she finally, around 10:23 PM, lets go and falls asleep against me. The brownstone is the brownstone. The radiator is running. The night-light in Nora's empty room is on because we leave it on every night. The clock on the bedside reads 11:14 PM. Then 12:42 AM. Then 2:31 AM. Then 4:09 AM.
At 5:48 AM, the light at the window goes pale.
Maeve stirs against me. She lifts her head. The hair is in her face. The eyes are still half-closed. She says, "Today."
"Today."
"Lex."
"Yes."
"Hold me for one more minute."
"Yes."
I hold her.
Chapter 33
Maeve
Grand Jury
Lex drives.
The car is an SUV. The route is varied. The third variation Petrov has run this week. Cormac is behind us in a second vehicle. Two Marshals are in a third. The escort is excessive by federal standards. The escort is, by Konstantinos’ standards, what is required when your wife is testifying today against the Bratva.
Today. It is today.
Tuesday, eight forty-seven AM. The light at the window of the SUV is the same flat gray it was yesterday. The temperature is twenty-six degrees. There is salt on the streets from last night's snow that didn’t amount to much. Lex's hands are at ten and two. The wedding band on his left hand catches the gray light through the windshield.
Neither of us speaks.
