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.
? ? ?
That week, I meet Petrov at the warehouse.
The Sokolov briefing is dense. Petrov has been working on it for ten days. There are twenty-three pages of surveillance notes, four photographs, and a chart of Sokolov's known associates that takes up the long table. The chart is the kind of chart Petrov makes, color-coded and immaculate.
I read it. It takes me forty minutes.
When I look up, Petrov is standing across the table watching me.
He’s wearing the same shirt he was wearing the night this started. The shirt is clean. He’s cycled through three of the same shirts. He’s not shaved this morning. The skin under his eyes is the skin of a man who has not slept more than four hours at a time for two weeks.
"Petrov."
"Yes, boss."
"When was the last time you slept?"
"I will sleep when this is closed."
"Petrov."
He looks up.
"Take a week. Go see your sister in Larissa. The investigation will hold for a week."
Petrov is quiet for a long second. He says, "Boss."
"It is not a request. It is an order. From me, not from Nico. I am ordering you to go see your sister."
"Why?"
"Because you have been carrying this family on your back for two decades, and I have only just noticed. Maeve asked me when the last time you slept was, and I didn’t have an answer.
I have a family now, and I have started noticing what other men are carrying.
Go to Larissa. Drink coffee. Look at the sea.
Come back when you have remembered what daylight looks like. The Sokolov thread will hold."
Petrov looks at me for a long time. This afternoon, being seen by his employer for the first time.
Then he says, "Yes, boss."
? ? ?
The party is at Eleni's apartment because Eleni has insisted we have a party for Nora there. With the unbudging certainty of a Greek matriarch hosting her granddaughter’s first birthday in the family’s full presence, the party will be at the place she lives.
We have agreed. The apartment is decorated with pink streamers that Stavros hung that morning under Eleni’s direction, and there is a cake on the kitchen counter that Eleni made by hand from her mother’s recipe.
The cake says ‘Happy Birthday Nora’ in green icing with a small green dinosaur Eleni has insisted on. Sofia Konstantinos is in a highchair, eating mashed banana with the gravity of a Senate hearing.
The Konstantinos family is here. Nico, Siobhan, Stavros, Dimitri, and Eleni. The full set.
The O'Brien family is here. Cormac, Declan, Finn (with the missing finger Maeve has not yet seen), and Ronan, who has flown back from Galway for two days specifically for this and is going home tomorrow.
Maeve's mother is here.
Cathleen Callahan, a retired librarian from Tampa, has flown up from Florida for the weekend.
She’s sixty-three years old. She’s in a green sweater that brings out her eyes.
The same green-gray as Maeve's. She’s sitting at the kitchen table at Eleni's apartment with a cup of coffee in her hand. She’s been sizing me up since she walked in.
She’s not asked me a direct question.
Librarians ask sideways questions, and that’s how I know I am being interviewed.
Eleni says, “Siobhan, would you like to see the kitchen?” in the language of Greek matriarchs, an instruction that means ‘Cathleen will now be left alone with the man she’s come to inspect.’ Eleni leaves with Siobhan and Sofia.
I sit down across the table from Cathleen Callahan.
"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 an incident 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.
Then she says, "Brigid sends me a tin of the same tea. From Galway. Every Christmas. She’s done it since I went back for Brendan's funeral."
"It is the same shop."
"It is."
We sit at the kitchen table for a long second, considering the architecture of two mothers in two countries who have been sending tea to two other mothers in two countries for nine years without ever meeting.
Then Cathleen says, "My daughter has chosen well."
"I know I am the lucky one, Cathleen."
"Good. Just keep knowing that."
? ? ?
Cake at 1:30 PM. ‘Happy Birthday’ in three languages: English, Greek, and Gaelic, because Cormac has insisted on the Gaelic version after Stavros sang the Greek.
Nora blows out three candles. She doesn’t understand the candles, but she understands that everyone is watching her; she loves the attention.
Cormac gives her the stuffed elephant.
"This is for Brontos," Cormac says, kneeling. "His name is Phelan. He’s from Ireland. He’s come a very long way. So Brontos has a friend."
Phelan goes into Nora's arms next to Brontos. Phelan is twice as large and has two eyes. Brontos, in Nora's hands, is formally introduced to Phelan. The introductions take fifteen minutes.
Stavros gives her the wooden boat. He’s carved it himself. Nora announces immediately that the boat will be in her bath, which is what Stavros has hoped for.
Dimitri gives her a small box.
Nora opens it. Inside is a tiny silver chain bracelet with a small silver letter N as the charm.
Dimitri has chosen it himself, which, I am realizing, is the first piece of jewelry my middle brother has bought for any woman in this family since Sophia in 2019.
Nora examines the bracelet. She looks at Dimitri.
"Thank you," she says.