ELENA #2
“You’ve blocked every doorway since you were nine,” Irina scolds, like she’s done it a thousand times.
Maksim shakes his head, helps me stand, and I take two careful steps into the kitchen.
A white refrigerator stands against the wall with old magnets, a faded church calendar, and a child’s drawing tucked under a red apple magnet.
Copper pots hang from hooks over a narrow counter, and a kettle trembles on the stove.
A small table sits under the window, covered with a checked cloth and two cups already waiting.
Irina pulls out a chair. “Sit.”
I ease down, and Maksim’s hand stays near my elbow until I’m steady. “Does he take orders from you?” I ask, teasing him.
Irina sets a chipped cup in front of me. “I raised him.”
Maksim’s mouth moves once, almost a smile, before he turns toward the window and checks the yard again. I follow his gaze. A guard passes outside with his phone at his ear and stops near the shed, scans the tree line, then walks on.
Irina pours tea and pushes the cup toward me. “Drink. Small sips.”
I wrap both hands around the cup, and the heat settles into my fingers. “Thank you.”
She nods once, then looks at Maksim. “There are clean sheets upstairs. I opened the old room.”
His face closes fast. “Why?”
“Because someone had to,” she says, and she doesn’t soften it for him.
I look between them, then toward the narrow stairs by the sitting room. “Old room?”
Maksim doesn’t answer right away. He keeps his eyes on the window, and his hand rests near the gun under his jacket. “Attic room.”
Irina adds milk to his tea without asking him. “His room when he was small.”
That makes him turn. “Irina.”
She sets his cup down with a firm click. “Drink your tea. You’re frightening the furniture.”
I push back from the table before I think better of it. My ribs object, and I press one hand against them until the worst of it passes.
Maksim steps closer. “Where are you going?”
“To see it,” I say, because I want the truth of this house before anyone explains it into something cleaner.
His eyes move over my face, then down to my hand at my ribs. “You take the stairs with me.”
He gives me his hand. His palm is warm and rough, and he keeps his grip steady without pulling. The stairs are narrow, so he stays behind me with one hand near my back, close enough to catch me and controlled enough not to crowd me.
The attic door opens into a small room under a slanted roof. A skylight sits above a single bed, and clean sheets cover the mattress under a folded wool blanket. The ceiling drops near the far wall, and the bed is tucked there with a wooden chair beside it.
I step inside slowly.
A shelf stands near the desk lined with schoolbooks, old notebooks tied with string, and chipped cups filled with pencils and crayons sorted by color. A boy’s winter cap hangs from a nail near the window. A wooden ruler sits beside the notebooks, and the desk has small knife marks along one edge.
I don’t touch anything.
Maksim stops in the doorway, his shoulders nearly brushing the frame. His eyes move over the bed, the shelf, the cap on the nail. He looks at each thing once, then looks away.
“You slept here?” I ask.
“When I was small,” he says.
I nod toward the pencils. “You kept them sorted?”
“Irina did.”
Maksim watches my face and says, “You’ve seen enough.”
I want to argue, but the stairs already look harder than they did a minute ago. “I need to sit down for a bit.”
“Then wait here,” he says. “I’m coming back for you.”
“Where are you going?” I ask, sitting down on his bed.
“I’ll check the men, the locks, and the windows,” he says. “You don’t go downstairs until I come back.”
“I can manage stairs.”
“You can also bleed through a towel and lie about pain.”
I look at him. He looks back.
Fine.
He leaves, and I stay where he puts me until the house settles around me.
Then I get up, walk to the bookshelf, and run my finger along the spines.
Dust, old paper, and dry wood fill my nose as I pick a book and carry it back to the bed.
When he comes back, I’m halfway through The Adventures of Dunno and His Friends with a blanket over my knees and my hair drying badly around my face.
His eyes drop to the cover. “Irina kept that?”
“You read this?”
He closes the attic door behind him and crosses the room. “I was seven. Don’t look so disappointed.”
I glance at the boy’s winter cap hanging by the window, then back at him. “I’m trying not to picture you as seven.”
He stops beside the bed, tall enough to make the slanted ceiling look rude.
“Don’t. I was shorter, not kinder.”
“Good. He was worse.” I walk to the shelf and slide the book back into place.
Breakfast waits downstairs on a small kitchen table. Irina has left blini under a towel, boiled eggs, tvorog with berries, sliced cucumbers, black bread, and coffee strong enough to make my hands useful again.
“She left?” I ask.
“Her house is down the lane. Second gate, green roof.”
“This isn’t her house?”
Maksim pulls out my chair and waits until I sit before he serves blini onto my plate. “It was her mother’s. Irina brought me here when my father’s house got loud.”
I look around the kitchen, at the worn table, the old stove, the clean towels folded by the sink. “And now?”
“Now it’s mine on paper and hers in practice.”
“That sounds convenient for you.”
“It keeps her from charging rent.”
His mouth moves once when he says it, and I almost smile. I eat slowly.
After, he takes me to a sitting room with a fireplace, a long couch, and two armchairs pulled close to the heat. An old television sits on a low cabinet, and when he turns it on, the screen fills with a woman in a spotless kitchen spooning sour cream into a pan.
Beef stroganoff. The real kind, with browned beef, mushrooms, onions, mustard, dill, and buckwheat steaming in a separate pot.
For a few minutes, I forget to be afraid. I sit tucked into the corner of the couch with a throw around my shoulders and watch the chef fold the sauce through the beef. My heart warms, and before I can stop myself, I smile.
“That looks good,” I say.
Maksim looks at the screen, then at me. “You like that?”
“I used to watch cooking shows when I couldn’t sleep,” I say. “My mother said it was pointless to watch food instead of making it.”
“Was she right?”
“Usually.”
He doesn’t answer. The chef adds dill, and my face must change because Maksim’s eyes narrow slightly.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
That means he noticed.
The show cuts to a neat plated dish, and the softness in me starts to make room for fear again. Maksim stands near the fireplace, one hand braced on the mantel, eyes on me.
“The doctor comes this evening,” he says.
My smile disappears. “I don’t need one,” I say, sitting up.
His gaze moves over my face, my shoulder, and the way I’m holding my ribs. He thinks he’s seeing pain from the kidnapping. To me, it’s the doctor’s hands, the questions, and whatever my body might give away.
“You do,” he says.