CHAPTER 25 #3
He holds the photograph at the height of the desk lamp as I held it.
He looks at her for twenty seconds. The silence is the whole sentence.
He breathes four in, six out. He lays the photograph back on the desk with its corner parallel to the corner of the desk.
He puts his palm against my back between the shoulder blades and walks back to his place at the wall.
Stefan lifts the photograph next. He looks at her face until the count completes and then lowers his head and touches the top edge of the plastic sleeve with the line of his mouth — a small kiss, the kind a doctor gives an instrument that has done its work.
He sets the photograph down. He puts his cheek against my temple once and steps back to my right.
Alexei comes from the door. He crosses the room slowly. His eyes stay on her, on the laughing mouth in the photograph, his gaze going past me to find the face I have carried for him. He picks the photograph up with both hands as you pick up a thing held in trust.
"Sophia," he says, low. Once.
He sets the photograph down. He turns the ring on his thumb. He goes back to the door.
Gabriel is last.
He is still kneeling. He stays kneeling.
He lifts the photograph from the desk and sets it on the flat of his left palm — palm up, the way Stefan keeps his palms — and he looks at her with his head bowed.
He stays that way for ninety seconds. His breath is even.
His shoulders stay still. When he lifts his head his eyes go past me to the candle.
"Sancta Maria, Mater Dei," he says, very low, his Italian-cadence English softer now, the Latin in his mouth the way Latin is in the mouth of a man who served as an altar boy at the Duomo di Napoli for nine years, "ora pro nobis peccatoribus."
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.
He says it once. The second line stays unspoken, kept back like a closing he is saving. The prayer is half a prayer.
He keeps his head bowed for four more counts.
He lifts his head and looks at me.
"Mia," he says.
The word is sotto voce. It travels the eighteen inches between us and stops at my ear. For me alone.
Mine. My own.
The translation comes through my head in my grandmother's voice. He has chosen the word as she chose it.
He places the photograph on the desk. He stays kneeling. He puts his right palm flat on the wood beside the photograph and keeps his head where it is — looking up at me, the candle reflected in his dark eyes, the half-prayer still in his mouth.
The third touch.
I bring my right hand up to my sternum. The pin in my hand presses against my chest through the medallion's silver.
The pad of my right index finger goes to the silver — to the angel's wing, to the hairline crack — and stays.
The third touch in the chapter; the count broken by one above my usual ceiling. The wound is open. The medallion knows.
I keep my finger there for the length of a held breath.
I take the photograph from the desk. I look at her. I look at the laughing mouth and the Cardozo lanyard and the lower right corner where my thumb has worn the matte finish smooth.
I slide the photograph back into the plastic sleeve. I open my wallet on the desk. I slide the sleeve into the first slot at the front of the bill compartment. I close the wallet. I put it back in the bottom drawer.
She is held.
I take the pediatric pin from my closed right hand. I unclip my ID lanyard from where I have hung it on the desk lamp. I put the pin back on the lanyard at the breast position, the clasp under the back of the felt, the way Sister Mary Catherine showed me how to wear it in twenty-twenty.
I put the lanyard on. The pin is at my breast pocket. The medallion is at my sternum.
I stand under the transom because the suite has no window.
The light through the frosted square has gone from gold to a paler honey.
The four men are around me — Nikolai at my left, Stefan at my right, Alexei at the threshold inside the room now, Gabriel still on one knee at the desk with his right palm on the wood.
I touch the medallion at my sternum. The fourth time today. The fourth is above any count I have kept. I let it stand. The count is hers now.
"Thank you," I say.
The thanks goes out into the air between the four of them, addressed to the room and the structure they have built.
Stefan reaches up. His hand finds the back of my hair where the knot has loosened at the nape, and he touches the auburn at my crown with the flat of his right palm. I am here. The hand is here. The cord at the wrist is here.
The candle has another quarter inch to burn. The light through the transom is honey.
The room is held.
Sophia is in the wallet in the bottom drawer.
Her name has been said aloud the second time in my life with these four men, and the answer to the question has been said to me in three repetitions, and the half-prayer has been said over her in Latin, and the word mia has been said sotto voce, and the pin is at my breast pocket and the medallion is at my sternum.
I keep my hand on the medallion. The fourth touch holds.
I make no tally. I hold.
Sophia.