Epilogue
SIERRA
“Are you really going to serve lunch in that?” my mother asks, glancing at the completely normal serving bowl with pasta salad in it.
I glare at her. “Ma, it’s a serving bowl. What else would I put the pasta salad in?” The kitchen is a disaster, because for some unholy reason I’d told Konstantin we didn’t need a caterer for a small birthday party with nine people.
My mother wrinkles her nose. “It’s not very pretty, is it? It makes you look cheap.”
“Anyone who looks around the place knows we aren’t cheap,” I say as patiently as I can manage. “Besides, it’s only family. It’s not like we’re hosting for half of New Bristol.”
“Family, and those two other men,” Ma says with disdain. “I don’t like that Yuri fellow. He’s so…”
I grit my teeth. “Yuri is a dear friend, Ma,” I say. I almost wish I could tell her what Yuri and Nikolai are to me. She’d ice me out longer than she had Kyran after finding out he was gay and fucking Silvano Cresci.
As it is, she’d nearly shut me out when she’d found out I was pregnant with the child of my kidnapper. It feels eons ago, though, and if I could forgive Konstantin, it feels like she should too.
But she’s never been quick to forgive and forget anything. I’m lucky she even came to this gathering, and it was only for the benefit of her granddaughter.
My mother takes the salad bowl—which she’d also criticized—and helps me carry it to the dining room.
Little Anastasia is excitedly making noises at Silvano, who is playing peek-a-boo with her. For some reason, I didn’t expect Silvano to be as doting an uncle as he is. Kyran is far more awkward, and even now he seems uncomfortable.
Nikolai has his camera out and is taking photos of everybody. Yuri is cutting up the big roast, Kyran keeps looking between Anastasia and Silvano, and Konstantin is talking with his mother Mila.
Mila gets up when she sees me. “Let me help,” she says in Russian. “Kostya thinks I’m too weak to lift a finger.”
“No, I think you shouldn’t have to lift a finger,” Konstantin replies, also in Russian.
I’m so proud of how far my Russian has come in the past year and a half, and even though Yuri still teases me about my accent, I can make myself understood. “He’s not wrong,” I tell her. “You’re our guest.”
Ma glares at me when I switch to Russian, and I fight back the urge to sigh. Mila doesn’t understand much English, though, and I don’t want her to feel any more isolated than she needs to be while she’s here.
“Anastasia is ready to eat,” Silvano declares, lifting her up. “Mrs. Winters, do you want to hold her?”
Ma tenses up, the way she always does with Silvano and Kyran, but she snatches Anastasia from Silvano’s arms. Anastasia laughs and reaches for Ma’s earrings, entranced by the shiny objects.
I wish Mila spoke more English. My mother could use a friend to help her navigate the changes in her life. Maybe Ma will warm up to her despite the inauspicious way I’d met her son if she sees how truly kind Mila is. Now that Mila is in the United States, it would help both of them to have someone close.
That’ll be my goal for the next few weeks.
“Mama!” Anastasia says when I pass her, and I lean down to kiss the top of her head as I sit on the other side of my mother.
“Hey, Stasya,” I tell her, and when she squirms to get out of Ma’s arms, I take her and settle her into her high chair.
The others take their seats as well, with Konstantin taking the head of the table and Kyran taking the opposite side.
“Let’s say grace,” Ma announces, which makes everyone at the table go quiet. None of us are particularly religious, and her insistence on following old traditions makes everyone uncomfortable. Konstantin translates for Mila, who nods and extends her hand to Konstantin and Nikolai around her.
My mother leads us in a prayer that—thankfully—doesn’t involve beseeching Kyran and Silvano to return the next year with wives in tow like she used to do for Kyran. When she finishes, Mila adds her own words in Russian, praying for her granddaughter’s good health.
I guess there’s nothing wrong with that. “Amen,” we all say, and then we can finally eat.
Of course, Anastasia is at the age where she thinks it’s hilarious to spit food out. She lets me feed her two spoonfuls before she’s spitting it all onto her high chair’s tray.
“Stasya,” I say with exasperation. “It’s yummy!” I make a show of eating some of it myself.
It doesn’t help. Anastasia bangs her spoon onto the tray and gleefully knocks the food to the ground.
“You’re doing it wrong,” Ma says. “And the food is too… ethnic .”
We all freeze. I open my mouth, ready to admonish her about the remark, when Silvano says, “Russian is an ethnicity, yes. So is American. Anyway, the roast is perfect. You did a great job, Yuri. Spasibo. ”
Yuri makes an awkward sound. “Yeah. It was mostly Kot—Kostya though.”
“It’s roast, Ma,” I mutter to her. “It’s not salo or anything.”
I use the Russian name for the pork dish mostly to annoy her, and her cheeks flush.
Nikolai clears his throat, then says, “Here. There are mashed potatoes. She might like those more?”
I pass him Anastasia’s plate, and he puts a small mound of them on it.
“Yum,” I tell Anastasia when I set the plate in front of her, encouraging her to try it.
Somehow we get through lunch, with the conversation easing somewhat. Silvano does his best to engage Mila in conversation, with Nikolai and Konstantin translating—and sometimes arguing about the translation. Kyran and Yuri end up talking about motorcycles, which is the safest topic for them.
I excuse myself to go get the cake, which is a fancy mousse cake that Konstantin had insisted on. “There’s no point in ordering a bad cake,” he’d said, and he’s right enough about that. Mila helps me put away dishes.
I get a single candle to put in the center of the cake.
“Thank you,” Mila says in Russian.
I glance at her, puzzled. “You’re welcome, but what for?”
She smiles gently at me. “For taking care of Kostya. He was always a sad boy. His father made him an angry man. But now he’s smiling.”
The thought of his father—of what Konstantin had done to his father—is enough to give me pause. It’s a good thing she doesn’t know how Igor Voronkov died, or that Konstantin was involved at all. “He’s a good man,” I say.
And he is.
They all are.
Despite this business, despite how bloodthirsty they can be, they are good men—or at least, as good as anyone can be in this line of work.
“And he’s an excellent father,” I add, more quietly. I touch her arm. “You raised him right.”
Kidnapping, rape, branding, and gun trafficking notwithstanding, but that’s something else she doesn’t need to know. There’s no reason for her to think of him in that light.
“I’m glad to hear it.” She lifts up the cake. “Now let’s see how long it takes for Stasya to make a mess of herself.”
I laugh. “Yeah.”
We return to the dining room, and Anastasia gets to have her first encounter with cake while Nikolai takes pictures of how messily she enjoys it. She has it in her hair, in her eyebrows, and I suspect I’m going to find it everywhere when I take her to bathe her.
This is her moment, and while her life will be full of sacrifices and difficult decisions as she grows up, she at least has this. I can’t shelter her, not like Ma and Pa did with me.
But I’ll be damned if she doesn’t have a good childhood to look back on.
I’ll raise her to be her own woman, to make her own choices.
And if she wants to be part of this world, well—she’ll have four excellent parents to train her.