We find Afon on a bench at the far edge of the dance floor, exactly where we left him. Galina is still asleep on his chest. Her tiny mouth open, her rosy cheek squished. One of her socks has come off and fallen out of reach, but Afon is clearly unwilling to disturb the little princess’s slumber by stooping for it. Instead, he’s clutching her bare foot inside his palm to keep it warm.
We pull up chairs and join him. “Having fun?” he asks us with a knowing smile.
I pat nervously at my hair, afraid I’m going to find a piece of trash or something lodged in it. “Having a blast,” I tell him. “You?”
“It’s the best moment of my entire life,” he answers with complete and total seriousness.
Goodness gracious.Softiedoesn’t even begin to cover it.
“You don’t have to go, you know,” I tell him softly.
Matvei nods from the other side. “We have room for you to live with us, if you want to stay near Galina.”
But Afon shakes his head.
He’s a hard man to read most of the time, but tonight, the usual flintiness has gone out of him entirely. His silver-shot dark hair has been combed back and oiled. His suit is a charcoal three-piece that’s a little too formal for a loading dock wedding, but I’ve come to understand that this is Afon’s version of dressing down. There’s a small peony pinned to his lapel—Mat snuck it on him when he wasn’t looking. The lines at the corners of his eyes have softened enough to almost pass for a smile, and his hands, big and scarred in places I would never dare ask about, look impossibly gentle wrapped around our daughter.
He looks, in short, like a man who has been on guard duty for fifteen years and has finally, finally been told he can rest.
“I’m sure,” he says quietly. “It’s time for me to go.” He looks down at the baby and strokes the back of her head with one knuckle, light as a feather. “There is nothing here for me to do anymore. Lukas has released me from my service. My nephewhas a wife and a daughter and a life I do not need to be inserting myself in the middle of. The city… The city was never mine. It was just a place where I owed a debt.”
“And the Catskills are yours?” I ask.
He nods. “As of tomorrow, they will be. I bought a little place last week. A small cabin outside Phoenicia. I’m told there is a creek nearby.” His mouth twists upward. “I plan to do absolutely fuck-all for a year.”
“You’ll be bored in a month,” Mat predicts.
“Maybe. But it will bemyboredom.”
I have to look away for a second, because my eyes are suddenly teary. Mat nods. He doesn’t say anything, but I see his jaw work and I know what it means to him that his uncle is vanishing into the mountains.
Afon turns and carefully transfers the baby into Mat’s arms. Galina’s mouth makes a small, unhappy O at the change in altitude, then resettles against her father’s chest.
When he’s satisfied that Galina hasn’t been disturbed, Afon rises. He pats Mat’s shoulder once, hard, then leans down and kisses the top of my head.
“Be good, all of you,” he says. “I’ll miss you very much.”
He walks out of the reception with his hands in his coat pockets, not looking back, but, to my utter surprise,whistling. Then he is through the door and gone into the Brooklyn night.
When Afon has left, I lean my head against Mat’s shoulder. We sit like that for a long time.
Across the room, near the edge of the dance floor, Caroline has finally come back inside. She’s standing with the letter folded in one hand, her eyes clear but lip quivering. It takes me a moment to realize it, but she’s looking out of the door through which Afon just walked out.
And she’s looking at it like itmeans something.
Her head tilts a quarter inch. Her brows knit. Her thumb works a corner of the envelope back and forth, back and forth, like she is trying to place a face she’s only seen once, in a photograph, a long time ago.
Then, with her jaw setting like she’s made up her mind, she charges out after him.
I frown at Matvei. “What’s that all about, do you think?”
He shrugs as much as he can with our baby in his arms. “No idea. Not our story. Maybe we’ll hear about it someday.”
“You think so?”
He stands slowly, then pulls me to my feet with him. “I’ve got a good feeling about it. Now, c’mon. I think it’s time I get my girls home.”
I laugh and let him usher me away, back out into the warm city night. “You know something,” I say, touching his chest as we go, “I’ve always liked how you look in ties.”
He chuckles. “Yeah? Well, I’ve got good news for you.”
“What’s that?”
He leans down to nibble my ear and whisper, “I look even betteroutof them.”
