Chapter 10 #2
"I'll check the pipes after he goes," Grandma replies. "Your kitchen window was open this morning."
"The latch sticks."
"I told you that last week."
The neighbor waves toward my face on the phone before hurrying home. Grandma hangs the key on a small hook beside two others, each marked with colored tape.
"You have half the neighborhood's keys," I say.
"People travel, and they trust me." She returns to the table, bringing the kitchen into place behind her again.
I've spent the last five days telling myself that secrecy keeps this room untouched. Konstantin's security interview asked whether Grandma depended on me. I described holiday calls, occasional visits and let everyone believe distance had settled between us after Grandfather died.
In reality, I call every day. I know when she changes the furnace filter. She knows when I buy shoes I can't afford, since I still send her photographs before removing the tags.
I also keep the spare key to her house in the back of my cutlery drawer. She has my clinic schedule written beside the kitchen telephone. If I fail to call before nine, she waits fifteen minutes before sending a message that contains only a question mark.
Distance never existed. I manufactured it inside Konstantin's conference room because a lie felt safer than letting armed strangers place Grandma on a protection chart.
"You should let me make your life easier," I say.
"You became useful too young."
I don't have an answer for that.
Grandma turns the ceramic rooster until its painted eye faces the window. "After your grandfather died, you decided I needed you every hour. I liked having you close, so I let you believe it. Then months became years. His death didn't require you to postpone everything you wanted."
"You weren't pretending to miss him."
"Of course I missed him. I also knew how to pay the electric bill before he died, despite what he told everyone."
I smile, though my eyes sting.
"You went on one date," she continues. "The date became a wedding with mounted guards outside. This is more progress than I expected, but I won't complain about momentum."
"They weren't mounted."
"The newspapers made the driveway look very large."
The joke dies when I picture armed men filling her narrow street.
"I don't want any of this touching your life."
"Then keep calling me," Grandma says. "Don't replace yourself with deliveries or men who shovel before I wake up."
"I promise."
Before fear of bringing Konstantin's guarded world to her door can stop me, I promise.
Grandma believes I'm talking about wealth, reporters, and a husband whose security fills the edge of every public photograph. She doesn't know that one criminal family considers me a permanent member of another. She doesn't know the man I nearly dated watched the restaurant from outside.
I've promised her a boundary my marriage has already crossed.
When I leave the clinic at four, the guards move around me without closing the sidewalk. A patient waves from her car. Tess presses a container of soup into my hands for the residence kitchen, while Amina makes the closer guard schedule a cleaning before he enters the vehicle.
The sedan carries me through evening traffic with my scrubs beneath a wool coat. My shoulders loosen as the clinic disappears behind us, then tighten again when the residence gates close.
I spend the ride reviewing tomorrow's patient notes.
Two periodontal measurements need to be repeated.
A new patient has written sometimes beside every question about flossing, which means no.
The practical details steady me until the gate camera follows our car through the second barrier, its dark lens replacing measurements and flossing habits with the life I've withheld from everyone inside.
My life outside the gates survived the day, but I spent every hour at the clinic hiding how often I speak to Grandma.
Konstantin waits in the smaller kitchen off the family room. He has removed his jacket, leaving his white shirtsleeves folded to his forearms. One of Tess's containers sits open beside him with a spoon on the counter.
"That's my soup."
"Your friend said it was for the house. She looked directly at me when she gave it to the guard."
"She meant me. You only benefited because you appear underfed."
His gaze travels over my scrubs. "Your patient attempted to invite one of my men to dinner."
"He needs human contact. Being invited to dinner may improve his reading."
"He needs to notice when a magazine is upside down before he begins socializing."
I set my bag beside the counter. "You received a report about the magazine?"
"It was a security failure."
One corner of his mouth lifts before the severity can hold. I take the spoon from his hand, tasting the soup while his fingers remain loosely around mine.
My phone vibrates inside the bag.
The app notification appears on the screen when I take it out. A monitoring flag has copied the alert to security. The missing date has sent another message.
I understand why you didn't answer. I shouldn't have commented on your wedding photograph. I was embarrassed by how the night ended and then I made that embarrassment your problem. I hope you can accept my apology.
He still hasn't used the mobile number I gave him before the date.
Konstantin reads over my shoulder. "He's developing manners," he says. "Several days too late, though perhaps he required a wife to teach him."
"You stole his date and married her. Victory could make you generous."
"He abandoned you in a restaurant he selected for surveillance."
"A man resembling his photograph stood outside. We still don't know who he is."
"We know he lied about reaching the block after police closed it."
The message waits under my thumb. I don't want this stranger occupying another dinner, wedding, or security briefing. I want to reject him in my own words before the men around us turn the profile into bait.
The account carries no name I can verify. Its polished photograph may belong to the man outside the restaurant or to someone whose face was stolen for the profile. Every unknown makes Konstantin more likely to decide whether I may answer instead of leaving the choice with me.
I remember how the security technician waited for my permission upstairs at the estate. That procedure protected more than the phone. It preserved the distinction between watching a threat and speaking as me. "I'm answering once," I say. "Security can preserve it. No one writes in my name."
Konstantin's eyes remain on the screen. "What will you say?"
"That I accept his apology for missing the date. I'm married, and I don't want further contact."
"Leave out the first sentence."
"Jealousy doesn't suit a man eating my soup."
"I'm comfortable with jealousy. The soup is unrelated."
I type the message exactly as I described it, then show him before sending. The security chief confirms that the reply will remain inside the observed account. I press the button myself.
The response comes before Konstantin returns the soup to the refrigerator.
I understand. I only wish I had walked in while you were still alone in the chair with your back to the service arch, with your phone beside the bread plate. I'd have done everything differently.
"No."
The word cuts across the refrigerator motor. I am back in that chair, phone bright beside the bread plate and the service arch behind me. Neither detail appeared in the released photographs.
Gooseflesh lifts beneath my scrub sleeves. I can't make my thumb touch the message again.
Konstantin shuts the refrigerator, watching me. "What did he know?"
I turn the screen toward him. "He saw me before the shooting."
The polite apology remains on the screen between my fingers, built around details no absent man should possess.