Awkward, painful, or otherwise.
He laid it bare.
He’d truly believed that he expected the same from her. That was the only problem with love. It assumed too much.
“How many hours did that take you to figure out?” Vaslav asked while he yanked out a pair of cotton sleep pants and slammed the drawer shut after. “Four?”
Vera’s gaze narrowed into slits from the closet’s doorway. “You can’t help it, can you?”
“What?”
“Being a prick. You can’t help it.”
Vaslav pulled in a hiss of air through his teeth, making it sound like he was considering her statement but really, it was all for show. “I can’t even blame it on the pain right now, either.”
He was just mad.
Yes, at her.
But not yet ready to tell her why.
All at once, the promise she’d shown to push back drifted away, and the sadness came back while Vera glanced down and picked at her fingernails. “If you didn’t want me to go to the city for a couple of days, then why didn’t you just say?”
“You’re foolish if you think a trip away for a night and day is enough to make me not even want to look at you.”
It made those handful of hours since she’d arrived home particularly difficult for them both, too. Where he would usually want her within his constant arm’s reach as dinner was served and the evening’s darkness turned into a cold, bottomless black, instead he kept an obvious distance. He outright refused to speak when she made any attempt at conversation when they were in the same room together. Silence could be his only companion when he, for the first time, was truly angry at Vera for something she alone did.
That sting?
It reminded him a hell of a lot of betrayal. Vaslav couldn’t play that treacherous game. Not with his wife. He’d done that once and paid a terrible price.
Finally, Vera’s backbone decided to make an appearance when she tipped her chin up and fire stared back in her eyes. He might have respected that on another day; a different time and dispute between them. Just not for this.
“Well, when you work up the balls to tell me what’s got you in a mood,” Vera told him, every challenging word she spoke pissing him off more and more, “then let me know. I’ll be around.” She turned away from the doorway, adding, “Maybe Mira needs help with something downstairs. Even washing floors at night would be better than standing here doing this with you.”
That’s how he knew—her secret was just that, a secret. She really didn’t know what had him so angry with her. She’d done something out of his view and believed he wouldn’t find out. Not surprisingly, it also made him think she didn’t intend to tell him what she had tried to do, either.
Vaslav took his time following the path Vera had taken, and when he exited the walk-in closet, she was already all the way across the bedroom. Nearly to the opened doors leading to the master’s sitting room.
He could have let her go. His anger would only stretch on longer, making his bitterness worse, and the sting sharpen into something neither of them wanted.
Maybe he should have.
Instead, Vaslav asked, “Did you think the Roseville facility wouldn’t inform me when my wife spent the morning making calls on my mother’s behalf?”
Vera froze in the doorway, the skirt of the black dress she wore wishing around her calves until the silky fabric came to a stop. With a scoop neck in the back and front, he could see the way her shoulders and neck tensed as she toyed with her hands out of his view.
“First of all,” she started.
Vaslav didn’t care to play that game. “First of all, nothing. How did you even know where my mother was?”
“Mira mentioned something that made me curious.”
Of course.
Vaslav didn’t give away how the news landed unceremoniously at his feet. Besides, what Vera said next was far more interesting.
“But I found papers for a wire transfer in the den—”
“On my desk,” Vaslav interjected, knowing already what she had to have found because it would be the only related thing in the house to the Roseville facility housing his unwell mother. That also explained how she had a number to call for the facility as it was listed at the top of the paperwork. “Were you looking for it?”
He wanted to clarify that point.
For his own reasons.
Vera let out weak, but still annoyed, laugh. “What difference does it make? And I didn’t make a bunch of calls. Certainly not on her behalf,” she spat over her shoulder at him. “It wasn’t like that. I called the reception, and was put through elsewhere where I left a damn message.”
“For her doctor.”
“It’s a psychiatric facility, Vaslav,” Vera said.
His brow shot up. “Yes, that’s usually where the mentally unwell find themselves when no one else can care for them, isn’t it?”
“Is she?”
“What?”
“Mentally unwell,” Vera returned. “Or did you just shove her there to keep her out of sight, and out of mind?”
Ah.
There it was.
All the little details that he didn’t have to answer the whys in his mind. Those same questions that had plagued him since that morning when the doctor handling his mother’s patient file at Roseville decided to call and inform him that a woman proclaiming to be his wife had left a message on his assistant’s phone requesting a call back about Natalia Pashkova.
“The woman is where she needs to be,” Vaslav settled on saying.
Vera’s brow furrowed, but she kept watching him over her shoulder, seemingly determined not to drop his gaze. No matter the topic of conversation, or how she felt about it. “That doesn’t really answer my question.”
“I didn’t realize you were owed one. She isn’t your mother, after all.”
“Good thing—right?” Vera asked quietly. “That’s what everyone’s told me who knows anything at all about her. You. Mira. Even Igor, although to his credit, he outright told me to be grateful I didn’t know her face in a crowd.”
“He’s right.”
“But is she unwell, or are you punishing her for what she did to you?”
Wouldn’t that be poetic?
Wouldn’t it feel so fucking good?
“Isn’t that what she deserves?” he asked back. “If I did?”
“I was only curious,” Vera said, opting not to answer his question, but he didn’t mind. “About her, mostly. I know things about her, stuff she’s done to you, but I don’t have a person to put a face to the name and deed. You know?”
“So ask for a fucking picture, kisska.”
“Ask you,” Vera hedged, “about her? History tells me I know better, thanks.”
His fists clenched into tight balls. He couldn’t deny that even standing there having this conversation about his mother with a woman who was nothing like Natalia, and deserved to be kept far away from her poison, took more effort than he wanted to give.
“I’ll be the happiest on the day she dies,” he admitted.
“I know,” Vera returned softly. “I hear it, and I’ve heard it before.”
Except she didn’t yet feel it.