Nadia
"He drinks my coffee black," I say.
Kostas blinks.
"That is not what you were expecting me to say."
"It is not."
"It is what I am going to say."
"Go on."
"He drinks my coffee black. He has been ordering it with milk and two sugars his whole adult life because that is the way Frank Donovan ordered it.
The first morning he was in my cabin, I poured him a cup of mine.
He drank it. He did not say a word. He did not tell me he takes it differently. He has not taken it differently since."
I breathe.
"He has chosen, without telling me, to drink my coffee for the rest of his life."
Kostas is watching me. Patient. The way a man watches a woman he has been waiting to hear speak for forty years.
"He walked into a warehouse on a Tuesday night and put two rounds in a man who was about to put a round in me. He has not told me he saved my life. He thinks I saved his."
"He has a laugh I have heard once. I am going to make him laugh again.
I am going to make him laugh in a kitchen with more than just a Chemex.
I am going to make him laugh on a Sunday with people I have not yet introduced him to, but who he is going to know the way you know a thing you were always going to know. "
"I have not been any of those things since the morning at the cabin."
"He is going to walk through the door of this study, Mr. Stavros. You are going to ask him to choose. He is going to choose me because I already chose him the morning he left me sleeping in my own bed and walked out of my apartment without asking about the family tree."
I look at Kostas.
"I love him."
The room holds.
"I love him the way my mother loved my father, who was not my father, but who raised me anyway. I love him the way Eleni loved me, which is to say enough to die holding my name. I love him the way I had decided, in Ginevra, I was not going to love anyone again."
"I was wrong."
I am crying.
I am not wiping them.
I do not want to.
I want him to see them.
The tears are the first thing I have given him without an operational reason.
Kostas does not speak for a long second.
When he speaks, his voice is not the architect's voice. It is the voice of the old man whose wife was alone in a house with black mold in the walls.
"You have been very fortunate, Ms. Ferraro."
"I know."
"Most of us do not get to say what you have just said.
My wife and I had three weeks. After Demetrios was born.
Before she died. Three weeks in a hospital room in Astoria with a newborn she could not nurse and a three-year-old who slept on the chair beside the bed because he would not go home without her.
We said it. We had time to say it. I have not said it to anyone since. "
He looks at the oxygen tube.
"I will not be saying it to anyone again."
"Mr. Stavros."
"Yes."
"You are going to have a chance to say one thing to my Sean when he walks through the door. Make it count."
He does not answer. He does not need to.
"I have something to tell you," he says.
"Yes."
"I knew Maria. She came to my son's memorial in January 1988.
She sat in the back. She was heavily pregnant with the twins.
She was glowing. I had been a little in love with her for years.
I never told anyone. Vittorio did not know she was there.
Maria saw me. Maria did not say anything to anyone.
She went and lit a candle that morning for the boy we had lost. She lit it for Demetrios.
She did not know yet that I was going to take her son three weeks later. She lit a candle for my son anyway."
He looks at me.
"Tell him his mother lit a candle for Demetrios. Tell him that is who she was. Tell him to be the kind of man who lights candles. Tell him not to be the kind of man who takes the sons of women who light them."
I am crying again. I am not wiping these tears either.
"I will tell him."
"Thank you."
"Mr. Stavros."
"Yes."
"I have one more thing to say. I am going to be the woman he comes home to. I am going to be the woman who makes him laugh on a Sunday and the woman who carries his children and the woman he is going to bury when one of us is older than the other one."
"Yes."
"I am not going to bury Sean Donovan. Sean Donovan is going to bury me."
He breathes.
"That is the deal I am making with the universe in your study, Mr. Stavros. I am making the deal out loud because I want a witness."
"You have a witness."
"Good."
He smiles.
His eyes have the dawn.
"Make him laugh, Ms. Ferraro."
"I will."
"And Ms. Ferraro."
"Yes."
"He has already chosen you."
"I know."
"I am very glad."
I do not speak.
I am not going to thank him. I am not going to forgive him.
He breathes.
"It is almost time. I would like to see him. I would like to die in the same room as my lost heir."
"You will."
"I would like to die with the consigliera on the floor. I had the floor planned for you. I want to apologize for the floor. The floor was the floor of a younger man. I am no longer that man. The chair is fine."
"Thank you."
He looks at the door.
"There is one more thing. His brothers. All four. They are coming together."
"Yes."
"He is bringing his brothers to the man who took him. Vittorio's sons. All four."
He closes his eyes.
"I did not plan for four. I planned for one."
"You wrote one."
"I wrote one."
"Yes."
"You raised him."
"No. I let him be raised. By Frank Donovan."
"Frank Donovan's son is bringing three Moretti brothers to my study. That is not the war I wrote."
"No."
"That is a better war."
He opens his eyes, looks at me, and smiles one more time.
"The math feels clean."
The door of the study opens.
The man in the doorway is not Sean.
It is one of Kostas’s security men—young, pale, visibly shaken.
The sky outside is going gold. The helicopter is at the gate. The four Moretti brothers are coming up the drive.
Kostas does not look at him. He is still looking at me.
"Sir."
"Yes."
"They’re at the gate. All four of them."
"Yes."
"What are your orders?"
Kostas closes his eyes. He breathes. He opens them.
He smiles at me.
"Let them in. It is time."