Page 90 of Night of Shadows
Tonight I give him the small, specific, narrow answer he’s asked for, which is the acknowledgment that the question is coming.
I say, "Okay."
He pulls me closer.
Neither of us speaks.
The fire in the small grate is the only sound in the room.
Chapter 27
Lex
The Fifty Days
Fifty days.
Forty-nine. Forty-eight. Forty-seven.The number doesn’t stop being the number until it’s zero.
I have moved into the brownstone.
Not formally. Not with a moving van. Not with a public announcement to the family. The moving has happened in the way things between Maeve and me happen, slowly and in pieces.
A second toothbrush was in the bathroom on the third day after Nora came home. A second drawer in the dresser on the seventh day. The Sig is in the nightstand drawer of the bed on the side I have been sleeping on, closer to the bedroom door. My own coat is on the hook in the foyer next to Nora's coat, next to Maeve's coat, three coats in a row, in a shade of gray that has begun to look like a family.
On day eleven, I bring up a box of books from the brownstone basement and put them on the empty bookshelf in the small office.
Maeve watches me do it. She’s in the doorway in jeans and one of my t-shirts. She doesn’t say anything, just watches.
When I am done, she says, "Okay."
"Okay."
That is, in the language we have been speaking, the formal moving in.
? ? ?
It is a Saturday morning. Nora is at the kitchen table with the small bowl of yogurt and the small plate of berries Maeve has put in front of her. Maeve is at the stove. I am at the table opposite Nora, drinking coffee.
Maeve says, "Nora, baby. We need to tell you something."
Nora considers her berries. "Okay."
"Daddy is going to live here. With us. For a long time."
Nora considers this. She picks up a blueberry. She puts the blueberry in her mouth. She chews. She swallows. She looks at me.
"Okay," she says.
"Do you have any questions, baby?"
"No."
She picks up another blueberry.
Maeve looks at me over Nora's head. Her face registering that our daughter has just absorbed a structural change to her family with the unbothered composure of an executive accepting a routine quarterly update.
Nora calls me Daddy from that morning forward, like she’s never called me anything else.
