17. Zoya
ZOYA
For the rest of the program, the photo sits inside my head like a lit match.
Please delete it.
No answer.
I put the phone in my bag, zip the bag shut, and tell myself that if I can’t see the message, then I can be a normal mother for the next forty minutes.
It doesn’t work.
Mila stands in front of the room with her paper leaf crown slipping over one eyebrow, singing louder than the rest of the class combined. Nadia stands beside her, serious and exact, mouthing every word like she personally wrote the song and is disappointed by everyone else’s commitment to rhythm.
Parents laugh softly. Teachers smile.
Karina nudges me with her elbow and whispers, “Mila is giving lead vocalist energy.”
I whisper back, “She thinks backup singing is a personal insult.”
Karina tilts her head toward Nadia and whispers, “And Nadia looks like she’s about to file a complaint with the music department.”
I try to laugh. It comes out too thin.
Karina glances at me, her face shifting from amused to alert. “Zoya.”
“I’m watching,” I whisper.
“You’re panicking,” she whispers.
“I accidentally sent my daughters’ picture to a stranger I’ve been inappropriate-texting for six years,” I whisper back through my teeth. “Panic feels reasonable.”
Karina’s eyes widen even though she already knows most of it. “Six years? That guy?”
“Yes,” I say. “He’s like a guilty pleasure at this point. And before you say anything, I know how bad it is.”
Karina glances toward the girls, then back at me. Her expression is strange now. Not only fear. Something else. Guilt, maybe. Or dread. She takes my wrist gently. “Zoya, there’s something you should know.”
My skin goes cold. “About what?”
She looks toward the classroom door, where the girls are waiting for their folders, then lowers her voice. “About that number.”
I stare at her. “What do you mean, about that number?”
Karina opens her mouth.
The first shot cracks outside. The sound cuts through the hallway so violently that every parent turns at once.
For a second, nobody moves. The whole room holds its breath, trying to make the sound into something harmless. Then the second shot comes, closer than the first, and one of the front windows bursts inward.
Screaming fills the hall.
Karina grabs my arm. “Girls.”
I spin toward the cubbies. “Mila! Nadia!”
They were there.
They were just there.
Now there are bodies everywhere. Parents bending for children, teachers pushing people away from the windows, bags falling, paper folders scattering across the floor. Someone slams into my shoulder and nearly knocks me into the snack table.
Miss Elena shouts, “Everyone into the classrooms. Away from the glass.”
Mila screams, “Mama!”
I see her yellow dress for half a second near the side hallway. Then she disappears.
“Nadia!” I shout.
A teacher moves past me with three children clinging to her skirt. Behind them, I catch a glimpse of Nadia’s dark cardigan near the classroom door.
Karina sees her too. “Nadia’s going in with Miss Elena.”
“Mila went that way,” I say, pointing toward the side hall.
Karina tightens her grip on my wrist. “I’ll get Nadia.”
“No, stay with me,” I say.
“Zoya, listen to me,” Karina says, voice shaking but firm. “Nadia is with the class. I’ll make sure she stays there. You find Mila.”
Another shot rings out. Children scream again.
I look at Karina, and for one awful second we are not two women at a school event anymore. We are back in survival mode. We’re choosing too quickly because there is no good choice.
“Bring Nadia to Miss Elena,” I say.
Karina nods. “I will.”
“Don’t let her leave the room,” I say.
“I won’t.”
I run toward the side hallway.
The library attack comes back in pieces. The smell of paper. The sharp panic in my throat. Ruslan’s hand pulling me down before I understood why. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, willing that image away.
“Mila!” I shout.
A paper crown lies near the wall, bent and glittering under the emergency light.
Her crown.
My chest locks. “Mila!” I shout again.
A little boy crawls out from under an art table, sobbing. For one terrible second, relief hits me because he’s not mine, and then guilt follows so quickly I almost choke on it.
A teacher scoops him up. “I’ve got him,” she says. “Go.”
I keep moving.
The side hallway is dimmer, quieter in the worst way. The chaos from the front becomes muffled behind classroom doors, but every sound inside the corridor feels too clear. A door banging somewhere near the back. A child crying from another room. My own breath coming too fast.
Then I hear a low groan.
Not a child. A man.
I stop outside the nap room. Blood is smeared on the floor near the door.
My hand goes cold on the handle. “Mila?” I whisper.
No answer.
I push the door open. The nap room is half-dark, lit by the hallway and the weak glow of a night lamp shaped like a moon.
Tiny mats are stacked against one wall. A shelf of stuffed animals has tipped over, scattering bears and rabbits across the floor.
The back window is open, and the curtain moves in the cold air.
At first, I see only the blood trail.
Then the man behind the low shelf shifts.
He’s on the floor, half-propped against the wall, one leg stretched out in front of him. His hand is clamped around his thigh, blood dark between his fingers and soaked into the fabric above his knee.
He lifts his head.
The room disappears around him.
Ruslan.
For a moment, my body simply refuses to believe it. Six years cannot fold like this. The past cannot be bleeding on a kindergarten mat while my daughter is missing and gunfire cracks outside.
But it’s him. Older. Paler. More gray at his temples. A scar near his jaw I’ve never seen before. Still Ruslan.
He looks at me, and recognition hits his face slowly, as if pain has dragged it up from somewhere deep.
“Zoya,” Ruslan says. My name sounds broken in his mouth.
I grip the doorframe. “What are you doing here?”
His eyes narrow despite the pain. “Leave.”
I almost laugh. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“You need to get out,” he says.
“My daughter is missing,” I say.
His expression changes.
Before he can speak, a tiny sound comes from the far corner.
A sniffle.
“Mila?” I whisper.
A glittery shoe appears from behind the stack of sleeping mats. Then Mila’s face peeks out, wet with tears, crownless and terrified.
“Mama?” Mila says.
I run to her and drop to my knees. She throws herself into my arms, shaking so hard I can barely hold her properly.
“I’m sorry,” Mila sobs. “I dropped the crown.”
“I don’t care about the crown,” I say, holding the back of her head. “I don’t care, baby. I have you.”
Ruslan makes a rough sound behind me.
I turn with Mila clutched to my chest. He’s staring at her. At the yellow dress. At the dark curls. For one awful second, I mean to leave him there.
That sounds cruel, even inside my own head, but the thought is clear. Even though I once had a huge crush on the man, or even something more… I can’t allow myself to go there.
Ruslan is bleeding on the floor of my daughters’ kindergarten. Gunfire is still cracking somewhere outside. Mila is shaking against my chest. Nadia is with Karina and Miss Elena, hopefully safe, hopefully still inside the classroom, hopefully not looking for me.
I have one job.
Get my children out.
Ruslan is not my responsibility anymore.
He made sure of that six years ago.
I tighten my arms around Mila and turn toward the door.
Behind me, Ruslan’s breath catches. It’s small. Controlled quickly. But Mila hears it. She lifts her wet face from my neck and looks over my shoulder.
“Mama,” Mila whispers, “that man is hurt.”
I close my eyes for half a second.
Of course she sees him. Of course my daughter, who cries when worms dry out on sidewalks and once made me apologize to a chair because I bumped into it, sees him.
“I know,” I say.
Mila’s fingers dig into my cardigan. “We have to help him.”
My throat tightens.
The hallway outside is still a mess of voices and fear.
“Mila, baby, we have to find Nadia,” I say.
Mila shakes her head, panicked and stubborn. “But he’s bleeding.”
Ruslan says, “Zoya, take her and go.”
His voice is rough with pain, and that makes me angrier than it should.
I turn on him. “Don’t give me orders.”
His mouth tightens. “This is not the time.”
“No, this is exactly the time,” I say. “You don’t get to appear out of nowhere, bleed all over a kindergarten mat, and still speak to me like I’m one of your men.”
Mila looks between us, eyes huge. Then she whispers, “Mama, do you know him?”
The question lands like a dropped glass.
Ruslan looks at me.
I look at him.
For six years, I have imagined this moment in different ways, though I never admitted that to myself. Sometimes I was calm and devastatingly composed. Sometimes I slapped him. Sometimes I told him everything. Sometimes I said nothing and walked away with my daughters on either side of me.
In none of those versions are we crouched in a nap room during a shooting while my child asks why I know the bleeding man on the floor.
“Yes,” I say carefully. “I knew him a long time ago.”
Mila sniffles. “Is he bad?”
The answer should be easy.
Ruslan says nothing.
I look at my daughter’s face, at the tear tracks on her cheeks, at the glitter stuck near her eyebrow. She’s waiting for me to explain the world in a way that fits inside a five-year-old heart.
“He’s dangerous,” I say.
Mila looks at Ruslan again. “But he’s hurt.”
“Yes,” I say. “He is.”
To Mila, that settles everything. She pulls back just enough to look me straight in the eye, her little chin wobbling. “Mama, we help hurt people.”
I feel it in my chest. Every lesson I ever tried to teach her has chosen the worst possible moment to come back to me.