Page 86 of Night of Shadows
"Brontos says he’s also very glad."
"Good."
Eleni holds her granddaughter on the carpet for a long time.
I stand in the doorway with Lex.
I am not going to interrupt the reunion. The reunion is theirs.
? ? ?
Nico arrives at 1:30 PM with Siobhan and Sofia.
Sofia is six months old. She’s in a small green knit hat and a snowsuit Siobhan is in the process of unzipping in the foyer. Siobhan greets me with a kiss on the cheek. She has the competence of a woman who has navigated the Konstantinos family for three years and is now navigating it with a baby in one arm. Nico is behind her in his coat. He’s holding the diaper bag. The Konstantinos family arrives the way the Konstantinos family arrives: in shifts and with provisions.
Sofia goes into Eleni's arms.
Eleni, who has just spent forty minutes on a carpet with her older granddaughter, goes through the same ritual with the younger one in a different register. Sofia is six months and is eating solids and is currently drooling on Eleni's coat. Eleni doesn’t care. She walks Sofia into the living room cooing at her in Greek.
Nico and Lex stand in the foyer.
Then Cormac arrives.
Then Declan.
Then, at 2:14 PM, the doorbell rings again, and a man I have not met before is at the door. He’s in an Aer Lingus carry-on bag and a black coat. He’s forty-one years old. He’s the same dark hair Lex has, only with more silver. He’s the same nose. The eyes are the wrong color. His are gray blue. He’stHe’s allertaller than Lex by an inch. His face is the face of a man who has just finished a transatlantic flight and a Boston cab ride and has come straight from Logan.
"Ronan," Lex says.
"Lex."
They embrace. They embrace the way Greek and Irish brothers-in-law embrace: briefly and with the contained, fierce weight of a thing they have been carrying for forty-eight hours.
Ronan turns to me.
"Maeve."
"Ronan."
"Cormac has told me about you."
"Cormac talks more than he should."
"He does. It runs in our family."
Then Ronan crouches. Nora has come to the doorway of the living room to see who is at the front door, and Ronan crouches at her eye level the way Cormac crouched at her eye level seventeen days ago. He’s, I am realizing, done this before. There are three years of small Konstantinos cousins he’s crouched for in Galway when they have come to visit my mother-in-law's mother.
"You must be Nora," Ronan says.
"I am."
"I am your Uncle Ronan."
Nora considers this. She looks at Lex. Lex nods.
"I have a lot of uncles," Nora says.
"You do. You have one more than you had this morning."
