Chapter 25
ELENA
I stop at the grocery store on the way to my father’s.
Not the small one near the subway that I’ve been using for years, but the proper one three blocks further, the one with the good produce and the butcher counter and the bread that comes out of the oven at ten in the morning.
I fill a basket with things I know my father likes, the dark rye bread he has eaten every morning since before I was born, a good cut of beef for the stew Carla makes when she’s in a cooperative mood, fresh vegetables, two kinds of fruit, coffee that is not the cheap kind he buys for himself because he doesn’t think he deserves the good kind.
I add a small tin of the cookies he keeps by his chair for no particular reason except that he likes them.
The bags are heavy by the time I get to the car. Viktor takes them from me without being asked and puts them in the trunk. I get in, and we drive to Queens.
My father opens the door before I knock.
He looks better.
Not better the way someone looks after a good night’s sleep, better the way someone looks after a weight they have been carrying for so long they stopped noticing it has finally been lifted.
There’s color in his face that was not there a month ago, and he’s standing straight in the doorway in his cardigan.
He sees the bags, and his face does the thing it has always done when I bring things he didn’t ask for.
“Elena,” he says.
“Don’t,” I say.
He steps back and lets me in.
I unpack everything in the kitchen while he sits at the table and watches, and tells me I didn’t need to do all this.
I put the rye bread on the counter, the coffee in the cupboard, and the beef in the fridge, and I say I know and keep unpacking.
I put the cookie tin on the small table beside his chair in the front room, and when I come back to the kitchen, he’s looking at me with something on his mind that he doesn’t say out loud.
“Sit down,” he says. “I’ll make the tea.”
He stands at the stove and fills the kettle and sets it on the burner and moves around the kitchen with an ease I have not seen in months, opening the cupboard for the mugs, finding the tea without having to think about where it is, and I sit at the table and I watch him and I feel something loosen in my chest that has been tight for a very long time.
We drink our tea, he asks about the penthouse, I tell him about the coffee machine, he laughs and asks about the view, I tell him it goes all the way to the horizon, and he nods like this is what he expected.
He asks about the staff, and I tell him there are two who come in during the week and he says good, you shouldn’t have to cook on top of everything else, and I don’t tell him that I have been cooking most evenings anyway because Roman comes home late and I don’t know what else to do with myself in that kitchen.
After a while, he puts his mug down, and he looks at me across the table.
“Are you happy?” he asks.
I look at my tea.
I think about Roman turning the lamp off in the dark and his hand resting on the seat between us in the car, not touching, just there.
I think about the wardrobe full of clothes the color of things I wouldn’t have let myself want before.
I think about sitting in a small room at his estate on our wedding day with a plain gold ring on my finger and the city spread out behind me.
“I’m safe,” I say. “Papa, I am genuinely safe. For the first time in a long time.”
He looks at me for a moment. Then he nods once and picks up his mug.
“I would like to meet him,” he says. “Your husband. It is past time.”
“I’ll arrange it,” I say. “Soon.”
He nods again, and we finish our tea, and the kitchen is warm, and the light comes through the window at the low angle it comes through at this time of year and sits across the table between us, and I let the afternoon be what it is.
Carla is in the hallway when I stand up to leave.
She’s facing the wall, her phone pressed to her ear, her voice low, the posture of someone who has moved the conversation out of the room. I catch three words before she hears my chair scrape back and turns around. The words are enough.
She ends the call when she sees me.
“Elena,” she says. The name comes out with a brightness that doesn’t match the look in her eyes. “You’re leaving already.”
“I have to get back.”
She follows me to the hallway and hands me my coat. I say goodbye to my father in the front room and I kiss his cheek and he squeezes my hand and says soon, about the meeting, and I say soon.
I walk out the front door.
His car is parked across the street.
Black, expensive, the engine running, and Aleksei behind the wheel with his arm resting on the door and his eyes on the front of my father’s house.
I see him before he sees me and I have approximately four seconds to decide how I am going to cover the distance between the front steps and Viktor’s car without looking like I am doing anything other than walking normally.
I walk normally.
I’m three steps from Viktor’s car when Aleksei gets out.
“Elena.”
I stop because not stopping would be worse. I turn around, and he’s crossing the street toward me with his hands in his coat pockets and his face arranged into the expression I know best on him, warm and patient and completely certain of himself.
“I heard you were visiting,” he says. “I thought we could talk.”
“There is nothing to talk about.”
“You got married.” He stops a few feet away. Not close enough to be threatening. Close enough to be deliberate. “To a man you work for. Very suddenly. Without telling anyone.”
“I told the people I needed to tell.”
“Elena.” He says my name the way he has always said it, like it belongs to him. “Whatever this is, whatever arrangement you have walked into, it’s not too late to make a different choice.”
“I did not walk into an arrangement.”
“Roman Petrov is not a man who marries his secretary because he has feelings for her.” His voice stays even.
Reasonable. “You know what he is. You have worked for him for two years. Whatever he has offered you, it comes with things he has not told you about yet, and by the time he does it will be too late to—”
“Get back in your car,” I say.
He looks at me.
“Get back in your car, Aleksei.”
A beat. He looks at me with the expression that used to make me second-guess myself, patient and certain and faintly disappointed, and then he smiles once and takes a step back and says, “I’m just looking out for you,” and turns and walks back to his car.
I get into Viktor’s car.
I close the door.
Viktor pulls away from the curb and I look straight ahead, and I wait until we have turned the corner and my father’s street has disappeared behind us before I speak.
“Viktor.”
He meets my eyes in the rearview mirror.
“What happened outside stays between us,” I say.
He looks back at the road. “Of course, Mrs. Petrov.”
I look out the window.
Mrs. Petrov.
I am still getting used to that.
Roman is in the main room when I get back, standing at the window with his phone in his hand, and he looks up when I come in and waits while I take my coat off and put my bag down.
“How is he?” he says.
“Better. A lot better.” I sit on the arm of the sofa. “He wants to meet you. He said it’s past time.”
Something moves across Roman’s face. “Arrange it.”
“I will.” I pause. “He looks good, Roman. Really good. The difference from a month ago is—” I stop. “He looks good.”
Roman watches me. “That was all?”
I look at him across the room. His eyes are steady and dark, and he’s looking at me with the full quality of his attention, and I think about Aleksei’s voice saying it’s not too late to make a different choice, and Carla in the hallway ending her call when she heard my chair, and the three words I caught before she turned around.
“That was all,” I say. “It was a good visit.”
Roman holds my gaze for one more second.
Then he looks back at his phone.
I go to the kitchen, and I put the kettle on. I stand at the counter and I look at the city through the window. I breathe slowly and I tell myself it’s fine, that it’s handled, that Aleksei will not try again now that he has seen how it goes.
I tell myself that until the kettle boils.