Page 126 of Night of Shadows
We sit.
"‘Kalí órexi,’" I say.
"‘Kalí órexi,’" Maeve says back.
She’s been saying it for three weeks now, since her Greek lessons began producing results she would let me see. The pronunciation is correct. The accent is on the second syllable of ‘órexi.’ I do not comment. I have been not-commenting on her Greek for two months, since the morning my mother told me at her kitchen table that Maeve had asked her, on the morning after Nora was returned, to be taught.
My mother told me this in those last days before the wedding.
I didn’t tell Maeve I knew.
I have been carrying that secret alongside the ring for forty-six days, the fierce, secret knowledge that my wife has been learning my language in private and intends to surprise me with it when she’s ready, and tonight is the night, and Maeve doesn’t know I know, and the surprise she’s preparing for me is going to be the most beautiful thing my wife has ever given me.
We eat.
Maeve says the ‘stifádo’ is the best version I have made. I accept the compliment with a single nod. We talk about almost nothing. The cloud Nora pointed at on the way home from daycare yesterday, which Nora has decided was ‘a cloud that is shy.’ The case prep schedule for the next eight months. Sarah Klein has sent the timeline. Maeve will be in court approximately twelve days between February and the indictment, and then again at trial in November or December. Cormac's bandage came off this morning. The scratch is now a small healing line on the inside of his forearm, and he is, by my count, still telling the story to anyone who will listen.
Maeve laughs about Cormac.
She’s been laughing more in the last forty-eight hours than she’s laughed in eight months. Grand jury closed something in her. I can see it in the particular way she holds her shoulders, in the way her face moves when she laughs, in the way her hand onthe wine glass is the hand of a woman who is no longer counting how many sips before the hand starts to shake.
She’s forty-nine hours past the grand jury room.
She’s the woman I am about to ask to be my wife in every register, including the one I have not yet used in English.
? ? ?
I do the dishes.
Maeve sits at the kitchen island and watches me. I do not let her help. I have not been letting her help with dishes for two months, since the morning I decided that doing small household work for her was one of the ways I was going to spend the rest of my life telling her I love her. Maeve has been letting me do this. The letting-me-do-this is the shape of how Maeve loves me back.
I finish the last bowl.
I set the towel down.
I look at Maeve across the kitchen island.
She’s looking back.
She’s been looking back for the last four minutes. She’s not spoken. She’s, in the candlelit quiet of the brownstone at 8:43 PM on a Saturday, registered that the dishes are done, and the cooking is done and the wine is mostly gone and the kitchen is the kitchen, and she’s waiting.
I walk to the cabinet.
I take out the pitcher of water and the two glasses we keep on the upper shelf. I pour two glasses. My mouth is dry. The dryness is the particular physical reaction I have been having since approximately 6:00 PM when I started lighting the candles. The dryness is not nervousness. The dryness is the body of a manwho has been waiting to ask a question for fifty-eight days and whose throat has decided the question is now in the room and is taking up the available moisture.
I bring the water to the island. I hand a glass to Maeve.
We drink.
She sets the glass down.
I set the glass down.
The brownstone is silent. The candles are burning. The clock in the kitchen reads 8:46 PM. The radiator is running quietly under the window. Petrov is downstairs in the lobby with Cormac and Declan. The city is doing what the city does on a Saturday in late January, which is to be cold and quiet and mostly indoors.
"Maeve."
"Lex."
