“The contractor did a gr—”
“And my mother is also up there now so I can’t even get beyond the first landing of steps,” Vaslav interrupted before Vera could start in on the studio and greenroom upstairs.
She blinked at what he implied. “Right now?”
His dry chuckle sounded hollow. “Ah, I said that wrong. Her ashes. They’re up there.”
“Your mother is dea—”
“On a dresser,” he continued like she hadn’t spoke as his gaze narrowed with whatever he envisioned right in front of his face. “In a bag. I stopped going up to get my clothes after Mira told me she’d put them up there after the crematorium sent it with a courier to the house. We’re back to Mira getting things together for me. I don’t know where to put the bitch, but she can’t stay up there.”
Jesus.
It took all but a few sentences for Vaslav to make it clear to Vera how his life could also fall apart around him without her near.
“You don’t have to do anything with the ashes, and I’m sure Mira and I could figure something out,” Vera said, her words seeming to ease the sudden rise and fall of Vaslav’s chest. “You could have told me your mother had passed away when I was in New York. Why didn’t you?”
He swiped a large palm down his dark beard. It, too, had thickened and lengthened with growth he would probably want to shave soon.
“They had to move her to a palliative unit a month ago—she lasted a week in there. You sat on the same couch I did when the shrink said her body couldn’t keep doing what she was doing to it. I hear the staff at Roseville kept her company. What did it matter if I told you? I never wanted you to know her to begin with.”
And now she never would.
Between them, the unspoken sadness hung like a heavy cloud. She suppressed the urge to apologize about his mother’s passing because he wouldn’t want her to waste the breath.
“Vera, come here.”
It wasn’t a question.
He punctuated the demand with a tug of her arm that jerked Vera closer to the sofa, and him. Her knees hit the floor as he rolled to his side, and reached for her again. This time, those roughened hands of his held her face.
Like fine China.
Precious, and his.
His first kisses were tender. Like his thumbs that swiped away the traitorous tears every time they dared to fall with her blinks. Vera didn’t want to cry, or be sad.
She’d already done a lot of that.
Just without him.
I missed you.
He let her cry more and apologize for the many short, terse phone calls between them even though she really wasn’t all that sorry. She did regret the wasted time because she knew they didn’t have nearly enough as it was.
I love you.
She unfurled his quilt and climbed into the small spot on the couch where more of her body hung off the cushion than what remained on it, but he didn’t let her fall. Wrapped in the blanket, up to her neck, with him, tight in his arms with her head against his chest where she could hear his heartbeat ...
Vera could breathe again.
She breathed better.
It was as if they had been one breath before forever when time stood still. When a choice was taken from her; when her entire life turned upside down. She didn’t expect anyone to apologize for those things.
Nobody said life was fair, but he let her cry about it all the same. About their time apart; poor Hannah; even how she came home to a house without him. She got it all out while his fingertips and stare studied and adored her the same way he always did when he held her close. Until her tears ran dry, and her trembling soothed to nothing but shivers because of his hands. He didn’t apologize for any of it, but that’s not what Vera wanted from him anyway.
She needed this.
Them.
Together.
Vaslav’s fingertips drifted up and down Vera’s spine under her hoodie. “It’s a new year. A new spring, kisska. Anything can happen. Anything could change.”
With him—at least, she told herself—she wanted to believe it.
Epilogue
Three months later ...
“There’s definitely something wrong. They’re taking the baby tonight.”
Nine words.
Two sentences.
Vaslav didn’t particularly enjoy eating his words, but the universe seemed determined to make him do exactly that. Everything did change.
It had been three weeks since time stopped, and he watched his wife walk out their front doors with empty arms and a worried smile.
He didn’t tell Vera not to leave.
Every phone call she made that filled him in on the unnamed baby girl’s achievements in the NICU ward left Vaslav feeling like he knew a child that he hadn’t even seen before.
Vera wore that same worried smile—even if it was tired, too—when he opened the front door after hearing Mira shout from her rooms on the third floor that they were finally home.
They, she’d said.
Specifically.
That should have been Vaslav’s first clue.
Vaslav had known who it was before Mira announced it because of Marrow’s sharp barks of warning from the rear of the house when he heard the vehicle rumbling up the winding drive. Had it been an unknown vehicle, the dog would have made a beeline for the front and kept barking all the while. Instead, his noise remained at the rear.
He didn’t expect to see the infant car seat hanging from his wife’s elbow, but that worried, tired smile of hers never faltered as she walked closer to the steps. Vaslav couldn’t see what waited beyond the black shade pulled high on the car seat, but the bundle of pink blankets were more than visible.
“Hannah’s mother is flying in,” Vera said, breaking the silence between them first.
Vaslav blinked, and forced his gaze up to meet hers, and she climbed the steps toward him. “I tried to warn you.”
Or maybe prepare would be a better word for the caution tape Vaslav had needed to proverbially put between Vera and her still comatose friend in the recent weeks since the cesarian birth of Hannah’s infant. He thought it unfortunate that Vera didn’t have the extra months with Hannah pregnant to keep her safe from her mother’s melding and control in her medical care, but they had already walked on very thin ice doing what they had.
It was time to step back.
“Once the baby was born, Igor had practically no control over how Hannah’s medical care would be handled. Her mother can—”
Vera’s furious gaze darted from him and down to the bundle in the car seat. “The baby’s been born for three weeks, and she never even asked about her!”
Vera’s sudden rise in tone earned a tiny squall from the car seat. Like the jaws of a dog had snapped at his ass, Vaslav jumped at the new noise, not even trying to hide the glare he shot in the general direction of the dangling car seat.
“Stop it,” Vera scolded him. “Don’t you want to look at her?”
A part of him did.
Another part of him wanted to drive across Moscow where he would find Igor—well-protected, sure, but what did that matter—and drag him to Dubna so he could take care of his child. No sacrifice could be made without some caveats, of course.
This was certainly one of those.
“They’re very small,” he told Vera.