“Vera, are you having a guest?” Mira asked.
The question had her slamming the album shut and leaving it behind at the table as she heard Mira encouraging Marrow to enter back into the den where she could shut him behind the safety of a door. Despite knowing what the dog had done to Igor’s hand, and anyone else who took his wrath, Mira wasn’t scared of Marrow.
“No,” Vera said, heading for the front door at the sound of wheels crunching over icy gravel. Anyone in the upstairs master suites would have a good view of the vehicle and occupants parked at the front of the house. “But only five of us have keys to the gate, so.”
Vaslav, Vera, Mira, Igor, and ...
“What is Hannah doing here?” Vaslav asked, his voice a booming echo from the upstairs where he had spent the better part of his day. Shades drawn, no fire to keep the rooms chilled, and entirely alone. It made Vera lonelier than ever, but when he wanted her, she always went. As little time as that usually was—she took it, and only helped him.
“Tell her if she’s using cabs again, she walks from the gate, Vera,” Vaslav shouted down the massive stairwell.
“Stop it, she’s not walking from the gate in January, Vaslav,” Vera called back. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
A door slammed in response.
Frankly, he shouldn’t have allowed Vera the choice in her extra gate key.
“Could you put that album away for me to look through later?” Vera asked Mira once the woman was satisfied with Marrow’s confinement and had crossed the foyer.
“Of course. Ask Hannah if she’s staying for dinner, yes?”
“Sure.”
While Vera couldn’t see her friend through the frosty glass of the windows next to the door, she still opened it with a smile, expecting Hannah to be close enough to hug. Almost. The cab was just pulling away while Hannah climbed the bottom steps.
“I’m not walking from there in this cold,” she said, already referring to the gate.
Vera didn’t mind the chill. “I’ll take a walk and lock it later.”
Slung over her shoulder, Hannah carried a weekender bag. In her hand, she held tight to a plain, white plastic grocery bag that Vera couldn’t quite see through to make out the box-shaped impressions bulging out the sides.
“Are you staying the night?” Vera asked.
“I bribed a certain someone to come get me tomorrow, so if you don’t mind, yeah, I’m gonna stay.”
Assuming her friend meant Igor, Vera only shrugged. She didn’t mind at all.
Vera moved back like Hannah might come right inside, but her friend waved her further out on the stoop once she was under the entrance alcove.
“Shut the door a bit,” Hannah said, shifting the bag so she had each looped handle ready to open in both hands.
“What is wrong with you? It’s freezing, let’s go into the house,” Vera said, but Hannah didn’t move. “Why didn’t you call?”
“Look,” her friend demanded.
Then, she opened up the bag.
One glimpse down told Vera all she needed to know. Every pink and white rectangular box couldn’t be mistaken with their big plus and negative symbols right on the front. She damned near had a flashback of her foolish teenage years when she really hadn’t known how biology, and her own body, worked, and the anxiety she felt picking up her first pregnancy test at the store. She couldn’t look at those boxes for one more second without wanting to scream.
Vera’s head snapped back up, and Hannah’s eyes were already terrifyingly wide. No woman bought a half of a dozen pregnancy tests because she wasn’t pregnant. In denial, definitely, but little else.
“Holy shit,” she muttered.
Hannah nodded, face whitening with every bob of her head. “Yeah, Vera. Holy fucking shit. You’ll sit with me, right? Like, after I take them or whatever?”
“You don’t even have to ask.”
10.
“My God,” Vaslav groaned, “won’t you just go to bed?”
“No.”
The soft response was still short and curt enough to tell Vaslav that Vera was getting annoyed that he kept asking. To be fair, that was only his third time in fifteen minutes. That didn’t mean he thought she shouldn’t take her pretty, sweet ass straight to bed where she could actually get some rest. She had better things to do than what she was—straddling his mostly naked, sweaty form on their bathroom’s floor while she massaged his head with those dainty fingers of hers at three in the morning.
Her friend slept down the hall.
For the second night.
Mostly because Vaslav had unfortunately learned earlier in the day that the person who would be running to pick Hannah up was someone he couldn’t have within one hundred kilometers of his home. Kiril.
All done with innocent intentions, according to the two involved in the plan, but he had still put a stop to that shit the second he knew it existed. He could do without any trouble that might be following Kiril at the moment.
So, no. Not happening.
Or so he thought.
Because the woman on top of him had different things to say, and he hated when she made more sense than his irrational instincts that sometimes steered him wrong. He didn’t have so much pride that he couldn’t admit it.
“You know Kiril was the one who had the connection to the man supplying your ounce a week, right?” Vera asked, breaking the silence in the bathroom once more.
He despised suffering, but worse, he hated the pity he felt for himself when he was in the throes of the worst of his migraines. Pity was worse because it did even less than his pain did for him at the end of the day; utterly useless, but almost always present.
“Igor doesn’t have the time,” Vera added. “He barely makes it out here once a week—and why do you think he was coming out here, anyway?”
Right.
Kiril. The connection. The ounce of premium, medical grade THC that Vaslav was smoking a week. At this point, he needed to move to concentrates or elsewise to make it easier on his goddamn lungs. He hadn’t smoked like that in years, and while the smoke had taken some getting used to, it barely caused a dull throb now.
The benefits far outweighed the cons, in his opinion, when it was an ounce of weed a week or a handful of Demerol a day. He could only play that game with his fucking pain for so long, frankly. And the last time he had to dry out off the pills, even if it was while he’d been hitting the bottle too heavily, was enough to tell Vaslav—well, to hell with his lungs. His risk for seizure and death was higher than ever if he had to go that route again.
Another reason he hated having a doctor at his beck and call. Bogdan, when in a pleasant mood, was actually a good conversationalist. He also had a formally frank way of delivering Vaslav’s eventual outcome, and how that death would occur, whenever he stepped out of line.
He should call the man less often.
Who knew he was such a sucker for punishment?
“You’re not even listening to me, are you?” Vera asked.
Worse, her hands left his head altogether even if his scalp could still feel the way those last rakes of her fingernails had glided over sweaty skin.
“No, only a little,” he admitted.
Vera grumped a sigh, flattening her arms over her chest.