11
Darina
He took me out on the water on a Wednesday, which he informed me, with the gravity of a man announcing a strategic decision, was the single day of the week least likely to put us within sight of anyone either of us knew.
"You've mapped this out," I said, watching him untie the boat from its slip at a marina I'd never once had reason to visit, tucked into a quiet stretch of the Intracoastal well north of anywhere Zarya's regulars would recognize either of us.
"I've mapped out considerably more than I'm comfortable admitting to.
" He held out a hand to help me aboard, and I took it, the boat rocking gently under my feet as I found my balance, his grip steady and certain the way everything about him was steady and certain.
"I wanted one afternoon where neither of us had to manage anything.
Not your brothers, not my organization, not the entire neighborhood currently watching to see how quickly I recover from my engagement. "
"You make it sound very generous, this kidnapping."
"I prefer to think of it as showing initiative. You said that to me once, I believe, in a considerably less charitable tone, standing in your own linen closet looking at me like I'd broken several laws at once."
The boat was smaller than I expected, given everything else about him — not the gleaming, ostentatious thing I'd half-pictured, but a worn, well-loved center console he clearly maintained himself, the kind of vessel a man keeps because he actually uses it rather than because it photographs well at a marina.
There was a faded sun-bleached cushion on the captain's bench that had clearly seen a decade of use, a tackle box bungeed into the bow that suggested actual fishing rather than performed leisure, and a small brass plate on the console engraved with a name I didn't recognize.
"Who's Marina," I asked, running my finger over the engraving.
"My mother. The boat was hers, originally — my father bought it for her the year before I was born, back when this family still pretended it might someday be something other than what it became.
She used to take me out on it as a child, before she died, before any of the rest of it.
I've kept it running myself ever since. Replaced nearly everything on it at least twice.
Never once considered replacing the name. "
"That's the most sentimental thing you've told me yet."
"Don't tell anyone. I've a reputation to maintain." But he said it with the corner of his mouth moving, the almost-smile I'd started keeping careful count of, and something in the easy admission settled warmly in my chest for the rest of the ride out.
He navigated us out into open water with the same unhurried competence he brought to everything, and I watched him at the helm, hair lifting in the wind, looking more unguarded than I'd ever seen him inside any building either of us owned.
The city fell away behind us in stages — the marina, the last cluster of waterfront condos, the bridge traffic shrinking to toy-sized and silent — until there was nothing around us but water and the wide, indifferent blue of a Wednesday afternoon that belonged to no one's schedule but our own.
We anchored eventually near the quiet southern tip of Key Biscayne, close enough to see the old lighthouse at Cape Florida standing white and solitary against the sky, far enough from the main channel that the only sound was water against the hull and the distant, indifferent cry of a gull working the shallows.
He produced a cooler from somewhere — cold water, a bottle of wine I didn't ask the price of, a container of strawberries that had clearly been chosen with more care than the casual way he handed them over suggested.
"This is considerably more thoughtful than I expected from a man who broke into my business with an emergency key," I said, accepting a strawberry, the sweetness of it sharp against my tongue in the salt air.
"I've my moments." He settled beside me on the boat's bench seat, close enough that our shoulders touched, neither of us moving away from the contact. "I wanted today to be easy. You've had a difficult month. I thought you might appreciate a few hours where nothing was asked of you."
"Nothing's being asked of me right now?"
"Only that you enjoy the strawberries. The bar is extremely low today."
I laughed, and ate the strawberry, and let the sun and the gentle rock of the water do their slow, patient work of loosening something in my chest that had been wound tight since the night the marshals walked into my dining room, a tightness I hadn't fully realized I was still carrying until I felt the first inch of it finally let go.
We talked about nothing for a while — his terrible taste in music, my genuine outrage at it, the specific argument we apparently were going to keep having about whether vodka needed to be ice cold or merely cold, an argument neither of us had any intention of resolving because the resolving wasn't really the point, only the easy, comfortable rhythm of having it at all.
"Can I ask you something," he said eventually, his voice gone quieter, the careful quiet he used when he was about to ask for something real. "About your parents. You don't have to answer if it's not a today conversation."
I considered it, watching the lighthouse, feeling the question land somewhere I usually kept carefully closed. "It's alright. What do you want to know."
"Whatever you're willing to give me. I realize that's not a question. I find I don't actually know how to ask it specifically, because I'm not certain what I'm allowed to ask."
"You're allowed to ask anything. I might not answer everything, but you're allowed to ask.
" I pulled my knees up, wrapping my arms around them, the old, familiar posture of a woman about to say something she didn't say often.
"I was twelve. It was a Tuesday — I remember that specifically, because everyone always says these things happen on ordinary days and it's true, it really was the most ordinary Tuesday, packed lunches and homework and nothing that should have ended the way it ended.
They were driving back from a dinner, just the two of them, something for my father's work.
A service road off the Palmetto. The official story is that it was the Maletins — that they'd wanted the freight contracts my father managed and decided the simplest way to get them was to make sure he wasn't managing anything anymore. "
"Do you remember finding out. If you don't mind my asking that specifically."
"Vadim came to get us from school. All three of us, pulled out of class within the same hour, which should have told me something immediately, because Vadim has never once in his life done anything without a reason attached.
He didn't say it in the car. He waited until we were home, all four of us sitting on the living room floor because none of us could quite manage the couch, and he just said it plainly, the way he says everything plainly, because he'd apparently decided somewhere on the drive that softening it wouldn't actually make it softer for any of us.
" I felt my throat tighten, even now, fifteen years removed from that particular floor.
"I remember Yegor was eight. He didn't understand what both meant, not really, not all at once.
He kept asking when they were coming back, for weeks, until one of us finally had to explain it in smaller words. "
"That's an enormous weight for a fourteen-year-old to carry. Explaining death in smaller words to an eight-year-old."
"Vadim carried most of it. He always has.
" I looked over at him, something rueful moving through me.
"I think that's actually the real reason he's so controlling now, if I'm honest with myself about it.
He had to become the parent at fourteen because none of the rest of us were old enough yet, and I don't think he's ever fully believed any of us are old enough now, fifteen years later, no matter how much evidence we give him. "
"Do you believe that story. The Maletins."
"I did, for fifteen years, because believing anything else felt like inventing a new grief I didn't have room for.
" I turned the question over honestly, surprising myself with how far I let myself go with it.
"There are things that have never quite fit, if I'm being completely truthful.
My father was careful, meticulous, the kind of man who triple-checked a receipt before he'd hand it to anyone.
The weeks before they died, he wasn't careful.
He was distracted, jumpy, the way you get when you're carrying something you haven't told anyone about yet.
I noticed it as a kid without understanding what I was noticing.
I've spent fifteen years deciding it meant nothing, because the alternative was reopening a wound I'd already spent a decade closing. "
"What do you think it might have meant. If it wasn't nothing."