Page 92 of Night of Shadows
"Mr. Konstantinos."
"Lex is fine."
"Lex."
"Mrs. Callahan."
"Cathleen. Or Cath. Mrs. Callahan was my mother-in-law, and I have not been Mrs. Callahan since 2020."
I file the year. The divorce was six years ago. The fact lines up with everything Maeve has told me, which has not been much.
"Cathleen."
"Tell me about my granddaughter, Lex. Tell me what she’s been like since she came to live with you."
"Maeve told you Nora has been sick."
"Maeve told me Nora has been sick. Maeve also told me she’s been seeing someone for three weeks. Maeve has not been good at lying since the third grade. Tell me what is happening."
I look at her for a long second.
Then I tell her the version of the truth I have decided to tell her. I tell her that Maeve has been working on a sensitive federal case, and that her case has put her under a level of threat that requires private security, and that I am the person providing that security, and that in the course of the last few weeks I have, with Maeve's full knowledge and full agreement, become her partner. I tell her Nora is safe. I tell her there has been anincident that I am not going to describe in detail, and that it is over and that Maeve will tell her more when she’s ready.
Cathleen listens.
When I finish, she takes a sip of her coffee. She sets the cup down and studies my face for one full second.
Then she says, "Brendan would have liked you."
"Brendan."
"My brother. Maeve's uncle. He died eight years ago. He drank at the Black Rose with Cormac O'Brien for years. He used to tell Cormac that his great-niece in Boston would be the family's first lawyer. He didn’t live to see it."
"I am sorry for your loss, Cathleen."
"Thank you. Tell me, Lex. Do you love my daughter?”
I do not blink. I do not look away. I look at Maeve's mother across the kitchen table, and I say, "Yes, ma'am. With everything I am."
"Have you told her?”
"Not in those words."
"Why."
"Because I am going to ask her to marry me when her grand jury testimony is over, and I want the words to be the proposal."
Cathleen's face does what it does, the small, careful agreement of a sixty-three-year-old retired librarian who has just been told what she came to find out and has no further questions.
"Good," she says.
"Cathleen."
"Yes."
"My mother sends my mother-in-law-to-be a tin of tea every Christmas. The tea comes from a small shop in Galway. My mother is from a village outside Salonika. The tea has been arriving for nine years, and my mother has never asked who Brigid O'Brien is."
Cathleen is quiet for one full second.
