Page 108 of Night of Shadows
"No."
My mother's eyes fill again. She doesn’t let them spill this time. The dress is doing its work.
"Tell Maeve the word when she puts it on," my mother says. "Not before. The not-knowing is the gift your grandfather gave your grandmother and the gift you are giving Maeve. The word will mean more for the not-knowing."
"That was the plan."
"It is a good plan, ‘agóri mou.’"
She kisses my cheek the Greek way, both sides. She steps back.
"Now go," she says. "Your wife is waiting for her coffee."
? ? ?
I drive home with the blessing in my chest where my mother put it.
The blessing is not a sentence. The blessing is not a permission. The blessing is the weight of a Greek matriarch who has, on a Sunday morning at her kitchen table, opened her hand and said ‘yes’ to the woman her son chose. The blessing is twenty-one years old. The blessing is the morning Kalliope died. The blessing is the contained, fierce architecture of a family that has been waiting for me to come home and ask the question I have just asked.
I do not tell Maeve about the blessing when I get home.
I bring her the coffee she asked for. I make her breakfast. I sit on the bed with her while she eats it. I hold her hand. I do not tellher what my mother said. I do not tell her what my mother knew. I do not tell her about the second promise.
All of it I am keeping for the proposal.
All of it I am holding in my chest like the velvet pouch in my coat pocket has been holding the ring.
Maeve says, against the rim of her coffee cup, "How is ‘Mitéra’?"
I say, "She is ‘Mitéra.’"
Maeve smiles. She doesn’t press.
She knows. She’s known since 7:16 AM.
Chapter 31
Maeve
The Attempt
One week before the grand jury.
I am in my firm's twenty-second-floor conference room with the federal prosecutor's team. Sarah Klein, the lead AUSA, has flown back from a deposition in Washington for this prep session. Her two senior aides are at the table. Two paralegals. The court reporter is not here yet because we are not under oath; we are running my testimony cold one more time before Thursday's grand jury appearance.
Lex is at the far end of the table. He’s in a charcoal suit. He’s reading the same brief I have been reading, but he’s not reading. He’s been watching the door of the conference room for the last forty minutes with the exact alertness of a man whose wife is going to be in this building for three more hours.
Cormac is in the lobby. Two Konstantinos soldiers are on this floor. Two Marshals are on this floor. Petrov is in the parking garage.
I have not been alone since November.
I am, by 11:47 AM, the woman I have been for sixty-three days — a witness with full security wrapping who has gotten so used to the wrapping that she’s stopped noticing it. I have been rehearsing the parking garage testimony for three weeks. I haverehearsed the dead informant's name. I have rehearsed what I saw done to him. I have rehearsed it so many times that the words come out clean.
Sarah Klein says, "Last pass on the Tremont Street sequence, Maeve. From the top."
I take a breath.
I begin.
