During the nap I sit on the porch with Maeve. She’s in a chair. I am in the chair next to her. Our knees are six inches apart. The lake is the lake. Neither of us speaks for a long time.
Then she says, in the small voice she’s using today, "Did you hear it?"
"I heard it."
"Are you all right?"
"I am working on it."
"I do not know what to do with it either," she says. "For what it is worth."
"It is worth a great deal."
She looks at me. She reaches across the six inches and puts her hand on my thigh, just above the knee. She doesn’t move it. She doesn’t stroke it. She leaves it there as the small specific weight that the gesture is.
I cover her hand with mine.
Neither of us says anything else for ten minutes.
? ? ?
Maeve gets a phone call at 2:17 PM.
She steps off the porch into the yard with the phone at her ear. I watch her through the kitchen window. She’s doing what she does when she’s on a federal call, which is to walk in a small precise circle with her free hand cutting tactical shapes in the air. The voice is the voice she uses for AUSAs. I do not hear the words. I do not need to.
She comes back inside seven minutes later.
"Federal prosecutor," she says. "Strategic question on the case. Wanted to know if I had any updated knowledge of the secondary witness's whereabouts. Wanted to confirm my testimony schedule."
"Could I have answered any of that?"
"No."
"All right."
She looks at me. The look is a look I have not yet learned to fully read, but the part of it I can read is the part that says: ‘I have a job. The job is the reason I am alive in the way I am alive. I am not going to lose the job in the next sixty days because of you or because of a man named Nikolai or because of anyone.’
"I will not get in your way," I say.
"I know."
? ? ?
After the call I put Nora down for a second short nap.
She protests for ninety seconds. She’s asleep within four minutes. The Konstantinos genetic capacity for falling asleep when tired is operating at full strength.
I close the door of her room behind me. I walk down the hall. I pick up my phone from the kitchen counter. I walk out onto the porch, and I close the slider behind me.
I dial Nico.
He picks up on the second ring. "Lex."
"Nico. I have something to tell you."
A pause. Then: "All right."
"Maeve's daughter is mine."
