Chapter 27 - Zara
The penthouse feels… alive with my parents in it.
My mother now sits on the couch with her cup of tea cooling in front of her, the same place where I have spent the last three months reading case files and eating food Mikhail put in front of me without asking. It’s nearly surreal.
My father stands at the window where Mikhail stands most mornings when he is thinking, and the window looks different with him in front of it. Everything about this penthouse is being quietly changed.
And I welcome it with open arms.
On the flight back from Athens, I made the decision to let things happen without fighting it, without the defensiveness I usually carry around with me.
I have spent a very long time protecting myself from these things, the disruption of having people arrive in your life who were supposed to be there all along but weren't. I am done wasting energy on keeping up my walls.
It costs more than it saves.
My mother looks at me from the couch, her gaze curious and affectionate at once. My father is more fond of silence than he lets on.
“We owe you more than an apology, my dear,” my mother starts, patting the seat beside her in invitation.
I knew this was coming. I could feel it in my bones since we boarded that flight.
I let it come. I don't reach for my notebook like I would have to transform into the journalist. I take my seat next to her, and her hand automatically lands on my shoulder. She does that a lot, like she can’t believe that I’m real, so she needs proof to convince herself.
“You do, a little bit,” I joke, although I know she hears the hurt behind it.
My father turns from the window. His eyes are worn, like the day he has been dreading has finally come.
“What we did—” he starts, and then stops, a million emotions passing on his face.
“You left me. You made a decision and I was not part of it. I grew up not knowing where I came from or who I was or whether I was someone worth coming back for,” I say matter-of-factly, but there is still a small waver I can’t hide, and I don’t bother to either.
“You both should understand that. I know it wasn’t your fault, or whatever the stakes were, but you have to admit to it. ”
“We do,” my mother croaks, her voice breaking on the two words cleanly, and she does not try to hide it either. That similarity is the first thing that has felt genuinely familiar since I found them.
“I'm not ready to resolve it and I don't think I will be for a while.
I am not saying I can't forgive you; I think I can, eventually. I think I am already working toward it. But I need you to not rush that. I need us to go slowly and let me adjust to both of you existing in my life after never being there at all.”
My father crosses the room as well to sit next to me.
For a moment, he studies my face, and I his.
There are bags under his eyes, crow’s feet beside the sharp curve of his lashes, and a few moles on his philtrum.
His hair is gray at the temples. The shape of his eyes is exactly like mine.
A man who has been looking at photographs for years now has a living, breathing reality sitting in front of him.
“Whatever pace you need, Zara,” he says.
“We'll follow your lead,” my mother adds. “In everything.”
The three of us sit together, my mother’s hand now on my cheek, and father’s hand atop my head, and my heart feels so full like it will burst. The foundation may be faulty, but it won’t be when the time is right.
My thoughts drift to Mikhail in the midst of the hug my parents pull me into.
He must be somewhere behind in the penthouse. He has made himself scarce for four days. Appearing only to check up on my parents and me, available but not inserting himself, skirting around the edges of whatever is happening between me and my parents.
He has brought me food twice without announcing it, and handled the security arrangements for my parents' temporary accommodation without asking me a single question.
He has been extraordinary, in the simplest words.
My father’s question snaps me out of my reverie. “You said you have been in New York five years?”
“Since I was eighteen,” I confirm. “I came for university and I stayed because the city suited me.”
“Journalism, huh,” he comments.
“Journalism,” I confirm.
My mother picks her cup up, wrapping both hands around her mug the way I wrap both hands around mine. Another small, involuntary evidence of inheritance I have encountered since finding them, and it makes my heart bloom in my chest.
“What started all of it? I mean, your interest in journalism,” she asks.
“Well, it was the Moretti investigation that started all of this.”
“Really?”
The curiosity in her voice makes me spill.
I don’t water down anything, giving them the real story about the source who came to me at two in the morning, the documents I spent three weeks verifying, the fear that raced down my spine the moment I understood what I had and what it would cost to publish it.
They listen quietly but intently, my mother’s head slightly tilted and my father rubbing his chin with his fingers.
“You were so brave,” my mother says, wonder in her tone, when I finish.
“Brave? I was stubborn,” I correct. “There is a difference.”
“I think in our family,” my father begins and stops in the same breath, and the weight of our family being together for the first time in fifteen years heavy yet gentle on our shoulders. He clears his throat. “In our family, they were always the same thing.”
My mother smiles a small and private grin, one you have when there’s a very long shared history, intimacy between two people who have been through life together.
I wonder if I have a specific smile for Mikhail.
As if she’s read my thoughts, the way people claim mothers often do, she turns that smile on me and pointedly asks, “So, what is Mikhail like?”
The way she says it is entirely too casual to be casual. My father's eyes dart to his wife’s with a speed that tells me they have discussed this in my absence.
“There's not much to tell,” I mutter, flushing, which gives me away so obviously that my mother's eyebrows reach her hairline.
“He managed an international rescue operation for people he had never met,” my father says drily, folding his arms across his chest as the corner of his mouth curls up in mirth. “I think there is quite a lot to tell.”
The back of my neck goes warm.
“He is—” I halt, because the sentence could go seventeen different ways and I am trying to find the one that is accurate without being everything, and failing. “Complicated,” I finish.
“Complicated? Give us something more,” my mother tuts.
“Complicated like—he shows up,” I manage lamely, the simplicity of it surprising me even as I say it.
“In every way that matters. He shows up.
He does not ask for acknowledgment for it or make it a performance.
He just does the thing that needs doing and stands there after.
He brought me coffee every morning for three months without being asked.
He sat with me when I cried about you both and he didn't try to fix it.
He flew to Dubai on a lead I had and said I'm going with you like it was the most obvious thing.”
“Of course he did, dear. He loves you,” my mother says like it’s obvious, and I try not to freeze.
“We haven't… quite used that word,” I laugh awkwardly.
“Does not mean it is not true,” she says softly.
My father’s brown eyes are assessing and knowing as they peer deep into my soul. “Does he make you feel safe?” he asks.
The question catches me off guard.
Does he make me feel safe?
I remember the alley in Dubai, and the corridor in the compound, and the mornings I woke up and found fresh bandaging on my arm. I think about the night I came back from Greece and walked into him and did not have to explain why I was falling apart.
“Yes,” I blurt out. “He makes me feel safe like I’ve never felt before.”
My mother envelopes my hand with hers, and the warmth of it is something I have been waiting fifteen years to feel.
“Then that is enough for now,” she reassures.
My father nods like it’s a conclusion he has accepted. He pats my head again.
Sitting with my parents for only the fourth time in my conscious memory, talking about the man I married under duress…
Who would have thought my life would come to this? And that I have, somehow, across the improbable and complicated architecture of everything that followed, fallen entirely in love with it.
My parents leave at six.
My mother hugs me at the door tightly, like she’s not certain how much she is allowed to ask for, and has chosen with their arms rather than their words. I hug her back, inhaling her scent like I never got to as a kid.
“Same time Thursday?” I ask, pulling back.
She nods, and this smile is the first completely unguarded one I have seen from her. My father squeezes my shoulder on his way out. Though a small gesture, it is the largest thing he has given me and I receive it accordingly.
The door closes and everything goes quiet. The same ordinary hush as before.
Staring at the closed door for a moment, I let the last four days wash over me slowly.
The compound, its corridor, the binding at my father's wrists, my mother's hand on my face before she left. How curious they were about me and Mikhail, and how open they are to him; it’s a careful, fragile thing that exists at the end of it that is not yet quite forgiveness but might as well be.
His musky scent envelopes my senses as his warm palm comes to rest on my shoulder, steady and grounding.
I am here, it says.
I turn around, neck tilting to look him in the eye.
The afternoon light catches the ink on his throat—those dark vines I've traced a hundred times with my fingers, curling up from beneath his collar like something alive. His hair is a mess, falling across his forehead, and there's a shadow of bruising along his jaw from his fight with O’Connor.