Page 77 of Night of Shadows
Nora lifts her head from his shoulder.
She sees me.
She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t say anything. She reaches.
Lex hands her to me.
I take her.
Her weight in my arms is the weight of every minute of the last fourteen hours, and it is also the weight of my daughter. Her small hands come up around my neck, and her face goes into the side of my neck, and she clings.
She doesn’t cry. She’s too tired for crying. She just clings.
I hold her close to me, but I don’t speak.
Lex is two feet away. He’s stepped just inside the door. He has not closed the door behind him. He’s watching me withmy daughter in my arms with the attention of a man who has decided, at the threshold of his own house, that he’s not going to enter the moment he just made possible. He’s going to stand at the door and let it be ours.
I hold Nora for a long time.
I have no idea how long. The clock in the hall will tell me later that it was four minutes and seven seconds. Four minutes and seven seconds is the longest interval in my life. Four minutes and seven seconds is not enough.
Eleni is in the kitchen doorway.
She’s come from the kitchen and stopped at the threshold. She’s in her bathrobe. Her hand is at her mouth. She’s making no sound.
I look at her over Nora's head.
Eleni nods, once.
I nod back.
Then I say, quietly, into Nora's hair, "Bath. Then bed."
Nora makes a small sound against my neck. The sound is half agreement and half exhaustion.
I carry her down the hall.
Lex stays in the foyer. He doesn’t follow. He’s decided, somewhere on the drive home, that he’s not going to push for any part of this homecoming that has not been offered. The bath is mine. The bedtime will be mine until and unless Nora calls him to it.
? ? ?
She sits in the warm water with Brontos on the edge of the tub, watching her, because she won’t be in a bath without Brontos assupervisor. She’s quiet. I wash her hair with the same shampoo I have used on her hair since the week she was born, the small green bottle on the shelf, the smell of it in the bathroom steam is the smell of every bath I have given her for years.
She watches me wash her hair.
She’s not crying. She’s processing.
After a long time, she says, "Mama."
"Yes, baby."
"The car had a smell."
My hands stop in her hair. I make them keep moving. "Tell me about the smell."
"Like the cleaning lady's spray."
"At daycare."
