“What was your question?” Vera asked.
All the arrogance that made up her brother’s personality had bled away the longer they sat together outside. He actually looked more like his twenty-one years sitting across from her—young and foolish about it. She missed being like that.
Carefree.
“So how come I know about the pregnancy thing,” Roman asked, “but Ma doesn’t? I mean, it’s Ma, Vera. I don’t particularly like to be mothered, but we both know she’s good at what she does. Maybe you need it, huh? Why not tell her? At least, she’s someone to talk to. Me, I just—fuck,” he swore, gesturing at his distressed acid wash jeans with the blown out knees, combat boots laced high on his feet, and the leather jacket he’d thrown over a plain black shirt. “Look at me. We both know I’m not here to do any feelings.”
“I don’t want to tell everybody,” she replied,” but I needed to tell somebody.”
Not even Hannah was there to listen.
Not right now.
“Maybe I thought my annoying little brother was the best person to share a secret with,” she added. “I wasn’t asking for you to cry with me. Just for you to keep your promise.”
Roman smiled, but it wasn’t very wide. “I did pinky promise to keep all your secrets once, didn’t I?”
She never let him forget it when given the chance. Like now.
“You were six, and really wanted that extra brownie.”
As a girl, she’d had no trouble at all manipulating her little brother. Frankly, her kid brother had made it easy.
He all out grinned at the mention of his favorite treat. Some things never changed. “Still do—I’d kill for one of Ma’s brownies right now.”
“I could make that happen,” Vera offered.
The excited anticipation that had her brother leaping forward in his chair made her laugh. And smile, too. Both things that she hadn’t been doing very much of lately.
“Tell me how,” Roman demanded.
Vera nodded to the side, directing Roman’s attention to the row of ten two-gallon pots of Hydrangeas that Claire had brought home from a nearby nursery. A variety of blooms, her mother’s backyard would have a rainbow of colorful flowers from June through September.
“Those,” she said.
“What about them? Ma said she got those for you.”
Claire had.
A tactic to draw Vera out of her room, really. It worked but only because Claire was not the gardening type. She enjoyed gardens that were well-maintained and ready to pick or prune. Less when it came to the grunt work of actually putting things in the ground.
That was work Vera liked.
“I need some holes dug,” she told her brother.
“Today?”
“It’s better to plant them at night.”
Roman sucked air through his teeth. “Are the brownies already cooked?”
“Nope, but I bet I could get Ma started in less than ten minutes.”
He rubbed his hands together, pleased. “And they’ll be done by the time I finish the holes.”
“Exactly.”
“Deal,” Roman muttered. “Where’s Dad’s shovel?”
Vera laughed again as she pushed up from the chair, heading for the sliding glass doors leading into the rear of the house. “I’m sure you’ll find it. Don’t start before I’ve marked the holes, Roman.”
He waved two fingers dismissively over his shoulder. “Yeah, yeah.”
“I’m serious.” Vera stopped at the doors, pausing before pulling them open so she could privately tell her brother, “And thanks. For listening, you know?”
Roman glanced back at her from over his shoulder. “No problem. I still think it might help to share that secret with somebody else, though. You’ve got a lot to deal with. It’s okay to just say so.”
Was it?
Was the hurricane that had become her life as a newlywed just a lot to deal with? Did phrasing it exactly like that encompass the overwhelming anxiety that crippled her some days? Vera didn’t think so, and she couldn’t say she knew how to start to fix it, either. Or if she even wanted to.
Well.
Actually, she did.
“I’d really just like to go home,” she told Roman. “I’m happy when I’m there; I can deal with everything—anything—there. Instead, I’m stuck here.”
Without Vas, she opted not to add out loud.
Roman nodded, but his silence at the mention of her returning to Russia said more than he would to her face with literal words. Like her father, her brother believed that her marriage to Vaslav meant they were no longer allowed to make certain calls with Vera. Even if it was something like talking about her husband’s current situation in his motherland.
If Vaslav had nothing to say, then neither did they.
The not knowing didn’t make things better. Not when she woke up every morning feeling like she had already lost something precious and was on the verge of losing someone else. If anything, being kept in the dark was killing her.
“For what it’s worth,” her brother said as Vera reached for the sliding door’s handle, “I’m sorry—you know, that you hurt right now. For any reason. I wish you didn’t hurt.”
“Yeah, me too.” Vera blinked away the tears she’d managed to keep to the privacy of her bed and evening showers. “You were right—this life’s fucking messy.”
18.
“Did you get all your mother’s hydrangeas planted?”
“Have you started to plant the juvenile beauties yet?” Vera returned, referring to the lilacs in terracotta pots that he’d just checked over that morning before leaving the house.
“I promised I wouldn’t without you,” Vaslav said. “And my question wasn’t about me, kisska.”
“I want to come home, Vaslav.”
“Da, yes, I know.”
The silence on the other end of the call extended both ways. He offered his young wife nothing else except he acknowledged her wants and feelings, and in kind, she gave him back exactly the same. Nothing.
A lot of their conversations had gone this unfortunate way since her departure to New York. At first, she’d been more than willing to spend hours on the phone discussing everything and anything she could pull out of him, in between begging for him to let her come home. It seemed like now she had diverted to a new path to make Vaslav suffer for his choices.
She wouldn’t even talk to him.
Not unless required.
“Vera, listen to me—”
“Cut the shit. You know it just makes me more bitter, right?” she asked him then before letting out a weak laugh. “I hate even saying that. Admitting it. I love you, but you’re making it really hard for me to do that right now.”
“There are but a few reasons you want to be in Moscow right now, Vera.”
“And?”
“And not one of them will be fixed or better because you are here,” he said, internally willing it to be the last word he had to make on the topic.
Vaslav wasn’t stupid.
He knew it wouldn’t be the last.
It didn’t matter how true his statement was—or that he could list off every reason she would point to for her need to return and rebuke it with an equally valid reason to say no. She would stay where she was until he considered Russia safe for her to return. There would be no more bombs catching her in the crossfire, or anyone else around her, for that matter.