After a second, she turns her hand over so my hand is in hers.
I tell her about Maria.
I tell her what Kostas told me. The ten years of partnership before 1985, when our father cut him out. The prison. The mold house. A thirty-one-year-old woman in a hospital bed in Astoria with lungs that did not work. A four-year-old who would not leave her side. A newborn who did not survive his first winter.
I tell her my mother, Maria, came to that infant's memorial three weeks after the baby died. She was eight months pregnant with the twins. She sat in the back. She lit a candle for a child whose father had been destroyed by her husband. She did not have to come. She came because she was Maria.
I tell her Kostas had been in love with her for years. He loved her. He took me anyway.
My voice gets thin somewhere in the middle.
I do not lose it.
But I am crying.
I do not wipe them.
She does not move to comfort me. She lets me cry without naming the crying.
That is the gift.
I finish the story.
I look at her.
Her eyes are wet too. She is not crying. Her eyes are wet because mine are.
"I cannot believe he was in love with my mother."
"No."
"The man who took me was in love with my mother."
"Yes."
"What kind of fucking soap opera am I in?"
Her mouth curves. "You're in mine."
I laugh.
She laughs too.
She leans into me.
I put my arm around her.
She fits.
We talk about Petros.
The conversation is shorter than the others because operations are what we do best.
She tells me what she has. She tells me the file is on a server Alessandro does not know exists. She tells me she has been carrying him for four years.
I tell her we'll deal with it together tomorrow.
She says tomorrow.
