As she shoved it open, letting the weight swing the gate without much effort on her part at all, the driver said, “Ah, so that’s what you meant. I’ll remember it next time—promise.”
Vera laughed. Mostly to herself, but she didn’t hide it.
Her driver wouldn’t understand the joke, so she didn’t bother to explain her amusement at his inquisitive look. They never had the same driver twice. Something else Vaslav paid good money for when it came to the car services he liked to use. It was also a requirement he demanded the service follow through on. He’d already dropped two companies for making the mistake.
“I’m going to walk up from here,” Vera told the driver.
“I was told to drop you off at the house and—”
“I will walk up from here,” she repeated.
Her tone did the job.
The man shrugged, and let go of the door as he dropped back inside the vehicle. Before he could slam the door shut, Vera called, “You don’t have to wait up there for me. Just drop the bags off at the steps. It’s fine.”
Not that Vaslav would think so.
Too bad for him.
Vera waited as the car slipped beyond the gate before she started her trek up the hill. Only a slight chill in the breeze kept her extra alert as she took a moment to admire the tall beauties with their beautiful blooms.
Beyond the adult lilacs, the few juveniles Vaslav had planted on either side of the driveway also had blooms and even new growth that Vera could distinguish from how the plants had looked when she came to the property the previous June.
She didn’t bother to close the gate behind her.
Something caught her attention instead.
A dozen terracotta pots, six on either side, lined the driveway where they had been spaced evenly apart all the way up. Every beauty that had sat in front of the house, the ones Vaslav had promised to wait to plant until she was home to do it with him, waited for her in the spots he wanted them to go in the ground.
She didn’t stop at each one.
Only a couple.
Here and there ...
The time it took for her to look over the plants gave her more to think, and breathe. She wanted that heady, floral scent carrying in the breeze to fill up her lungs and stay there because it helped so much with that anxiety in her chest. So much so, she could ignore it again as she made her way up the remainder of the winding drive.
Vaslav called her home in much the same way he had sent her away. With little to no warning, without her input, and it left Vera feeling like a vessel in a storm of her husband’s making. Thrashed by emotional waves, unsteady on her feet, and not quite settled in her heart. Her complaints were certainly heard, but they had never been corrected, and that made everything else harder.
She explained that to Vaslav, too.
Being home should help.
Or that’s what Vera kept telling herself.
At the halfway point, the driver waved to her on his way back down to the gate. Three quarters of the way up, with only fifty or so feet left for her to walk before she entered the circular section of the driveway with the towering birch trees in the middle, well, her hands started to shake.
Just a little.
Those nerves came back fast.
Maybe she expected to reach the ridge of the hill and drive to see Vaslav standing at the top of the stairs leading to the front door of the house wearing his familiar scowl while he stared at the bags the driver had left for her to carry up the steps. Except her husband wasn’t waiting there for her at all, but the steps weren’t completely empty, either.
The sight of a grinning Kiril still made Vera smile.
It could have been the way he lazily waved two fingers in her direction where he sat on the bottom step with his booted feet resting on one of her rolling bags that gained her smile. Really, it was simply the familiar face waiting for her.
It made the place feel more like home even if she hadn’t left the place while Kiril was there to see her go, he was still a reminder of her memories here. In a way. She wouldn’t deny that it made her happy to find him there with his distressed leather jacket and denim jeans with blown out knees, either.
“Still hiding from Mira outside?” she asked Kiril as she rounded the towering birch trees.
The teenager shrugged. “Not really. Just thought you might need some help with your bags.”
“Was today Vaslav’s drop-off day, or what?”
Kiril shrugged one shoulder, and then dropped his boots to the ground before pushing up from the step. “Nah, I’ve been here since the weekend.”
“Here,” she said.
“Da—yeah.”
“At the house.”
Kiril just stared at her, confused. “I said that?”
He had.
Vera needed a minute to catch up. Apparently, a few things had changed since she left. Someone hadn’t filled her in about the changes, so here she was, figuring it all out on her own. Interestingly enough, Vaslav had not mentioned the fact that Kiril was spending more time in Dubna again, let alone at the house. Considering the fit he’d thrown over Kiril, she was more than curious about the slice of humble pie Vaslav had needed to swallow to let the kid in again.
Or did his reason come from somewhere else?
The man of the hour was nowhere to ask.
Surprise.
“Did he at least give you a bedroom?” she asked, folding her arms over her chest.
Kiril nodded. “In Mira’s suites. She still babies me a lot.” He scoffed then, and made a face. “Well, all the fuckin’ time, I mean.”
Vera didn’t suppress her smile. “But?”
“I never go hungry.”
Yeah, she bet.
And he also wasn’t alone.
That probably made the rest easier to swallow, but Vera seriously doubted Kiril would appreciate it if she pointed that out. So, she opted not to.
Eyeing the house while Kiril grabbed a handle on each bag of rolling luggage—leaving only a small duffle bag for Vera to carry—her gaze eventually traveled to the front door. A door that remained closed despite her arrival, and a car that had come up the drive and then gone. Something that never happened without Vaslav going to the front door.
Or checking the windows above on the second floor.
Not even the drapes had moved.
The obvious question she could no longer ignore started to slip out of her mouth before she was even ready to ask it. Her heart had a way of doing that to her—controlling her brain.
Vera kind of hated it.
“Where is my husband?”
She should have asked it the second she noticed her blush-white Hummer had been taken from the shed and parked at the far end of the circular drive.
Without its black companion.
Like her, the vehicle was alone.
Kiril cleared his throat, but he didn’t avoid her stare when she looked to him for an actual answer. The question hadn’t been rhetorical, after all.
“Well?” she demanded. “Don’t lie and tell me he’s here.”
Clearly, he wasn’t.
Kiril’s lips puckered with consideration, but he let it all go with a noisy sigh. “Probably killing people.”
Vera blinked. “What?”
His answer seemed ridiculous, but his following silence made her reconsider her initial thought.
Was it?
“Kiril,” Vera started.
He only shrugged again. “I’m just saying—he might have gotten mad and wanted you to come home. All I know is he said that to do that, people had to die. You don’t ask him questions, Vera. Okay? He says shit like that, and you just don’t ask.”