"All right."
"I am telling you because today you did something for my family by being the man you are, and I want you to know my family has its own version of what you did today, and we have been carrying it for years, and the man you became today is a man my brothers will know."
I look at him for a long second.
"Cormac."
"Yes."
"Thank you."
Cormac nods once.
I look out the windshield. The interstate is dark. The dashboard glows. In the back seat, my daughter sleeps against my brother-in-law's shoulder. The interior of my chest is a place I do not have language for.
‘I would do that a hundred times to bring her back.’
‘Maeve too. Anyone of mine.’
‘The world burns before they do.’
Chapter 24
Maeve
Daddy
Ihave been at the front window for two hours.
The window is the bay window in the front parlor of the brownstone, a Brookline Victorian feature. Tonight, I am a woman at a front window. The streetlights are on. The curb is empty. The Konstantinos detail in the lobby has been silent for nineteen minutes. Petrov is downstairs at the door.
Eleni woke up at 9:47 PM. She’s in the kitchen with a mug of tea I made her about fifteen minutes ago. She’s not asked me to come away from the window. She knows.
At 10:14 PM, headlights turn onto the street.
The SUV pulls up at the curb.
Lex gets out of the back seat.
He has Nora in his arms.
She’s awake. Her small head is against his shoulder. Her hair is on one side from sleep. Brontos is pressed between her chest and his coat. She’s wearing the dinosaur pajamas she wore to Eleni's. The dinosaur pajamas have a stain on the front I cannot identify from here, and her face, when she lifts it for one second, is the face of a child who has spent fourteen hours in a vehicle with strangers and is, processing the experience by being absolutely still in her father's arms.
She’s alive.
She’s alive.
I do not run.
I want to run. I want to throw the door open and pull her out of his arms and clutch her to me and never let her go and break apart in his foyer where the Konstantinos detail can see me. I want all of these things, and I do not do any of them, because I am not going to be the kind of mother who takes her daughter from the man who brought her back. The taking is his to give. The receiving is mine to wait for.
I walk slowly to the front door. I open it before he reaches the top step.
Lex is on the threshold.
His coat is wrong. His left sleeve has a dark patch on it that is not from the bandage on his upper arm. The fabric of his coat smells like a smell I will not let myself name yet.
The gold eyes are doing what the gold eyes do, only the version I am seeing now is the version I have not seen before. The version of a man who has crossed the line he’s been waiting to cross and is bringing home the daughter he crossed it for.
