Page 85 of Night of Shadows
"You changed."
He goes still.
"You changed," I say. "I have known a lot of men. I have not seen one of them change."
"Maeve."
"I want you to know I see it."
He pulls me to him. He uses the good arm. The bandaged arm goes around me carefully. He presses his face into the top of my hair, and he holds me there, and we do not speak for a long time. The sound in the room is the sound of his breathing, which is the breathing of a man who has been holding something for the last fifteen years and is allowing himself, in this small office in this small house, to let it out.
After a long time he says, into my hair, "I didn’t know I was capable of that."
"Of what?"
"Of choosing the harder thing."
"I know," I say. "I knew before you did."
? ? ?
Eleni arrives at 11:47 AM.
She’s not seen Nora since the kidnapping. She’s been asleep at her own apartment with the Konstantinos doctor next door for two days, on the orders of Theodoros, who has been watching her blood pressure and her sleep . She’s called the brownstone every two hours. She’s not asked to come over until this morning. She knows the shape of how a Greek family puts itself back together after a breach, and the shape requires patience.
She rings the bell.
Lex opens the door.
Eleni walks into the foyer in a navy coat I have not seen before, the coat she wears when she’s not in mourning but is wearing the color anyway because the day requires it. She’s wearing small gold earrings. Her hair is in the bun. The bandage at her temple has been replaced with a smaller one. She looks like the version of Eleni I met four days ago, only the version I am seeing now is the version that has been through three days that have aged her in a way her body is not going to come back from in a hurry.
She looks at Lex.
She looks at me behind him.
Then she says, in English, in a voice that is the voice of a Greek mother holding herself together by an accumulated lifetime of holding herself together, "Where is she."
Nora is in the living room with the crayons.
Lex steps aside.
Eleni walks past us. She crosses the foyer and the dining room and stops at the threshold of the living room. She doesn’t enter immediately. She stands in the doorway and looks at her almost-three-year-old granddaughter on the carpet with the crayons spread out in front of her, and the granddaughter looks up, and the granddaughter says, "‘Yia-yia.’"
Eleni walks across the room.
She drops to her knees beside Nora. The drop is harder than it was four days ago because it has been four days and Eleni's body has been through a thing. She doesn’t let the harder show on her face. She says, "Hello, ‘koukla mou.’"
Nora studies Eleni's face.
She says, "‘Yia-yia,’ are you crying."
Eleni's eyes are very wet.
"A little," she says.
"Don't cry," Nora says, in the quiet, fierce diplomacy of a child telling a grown-up that the crying is not necessary. "I'm okay. Brontos says don't cry."
Eleni laughs. The laugh is wet. The laugh comes out of her like a thing that has been waiting to be allowed out for three days. Eleni takes Brontos from Nora and holds him against her chest the way she held him the first time. She says, "Tell Brontos I am very glad to see him."
