Page 104 of Night of Shadows
I open it. I text my brother one line.
‘I need to ask Mama something. Soon.’
I set the phone face down on the nightstand. I do not expect a reply at 5:47 AM on a Sunday.
The phone buzzes inside of thirty seconds.
I pick it up. Nico, awake, in his own apartment three blocks away, with his own daughter on the way to her own crib, with his own wife asleep, has answered me at 5:48 AM on a Sunday with a single line.
‘She already knows. She's been waiting. Tell her tomorrow.’
I close my eyes.
I sit with the phone in my hand for a long minute, and I think about my mother knowing. My mother handed me the ring on the morning after Andreev and said, ‘For when you are ready,’ and went back to her tea and waited for me to be ready.
My mother has been waiting. My mother already knows.
I set the phone face down. I stay still.
Maeve's hand is at my collarbone. Maeve is asleep. The light at the window is paler now. The sun is coming.
Tomorrow I will start the work of becoming the man who asks the woman he loves to marry him in front of everyone they love.
This morning, I will lie still and let her sleep on me. The answer has already been given.
The question is the easy part.
Chapter 30
Lex
Mama
Maeve wakes at 7:14 AM.
She surfaces slowly, the way she always does, her face still against my collarbone, a small frown working at her before she decides whether to let the daylight in. I have been awake for hours and have not moved. The plan for the next four hours has been in my head since my brother called at 5:48: my mother already knows.
"Lex."
"Yes."
"What time is it?"
"Seven-fourteen."
"On a Sunday?"
"On a Sunday."
"Why are you awake?"
I think about how to give her this without making it large. I think about the velvet pouch in the nightstand six feet from her head. I think about the conversation I have decided to have with my mother in approximately two hours.
"I have to go see ‘Mitéra’this morning."
Maeve lifts her head from my chest. She’s looking at me. The gray-green eyes are still half-asleep. The frown deepens, but notin alarm. The look is the look of a woman who has been married long enough to register the difference between ‘I am going to deal with a thing’ and ‘I am going to do a thing for which the doing is the point.’
"This morning."
