Chapter 15Ana
Ana
“Mommy, is it true you don’t remember anything? That’s what Uncle Tony says.”
“Yeah, baby, I’m so sorry.”
He moves right on, like he doesn’t get why I’m apologizing so it’s not worth his time. “Is it real weird?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“So you don’t remember that time we went to the playground and you slipped and fell in the mud and it looked like you pooped your pants?”
Tony, for his part, has the decency to look out the window of the plane and cover his mouth with his hand as he laughs.
“No, baby, but that sounds really funny.”
Artom lights up so brightly I can’t even be bothered by the fact that the memory of me that pops out most to him is muddy pants.
I still haven’t had any strong memories hit, but I feel so strongly about him.
I love him so much it hurts. The moment the captain told us we could take off our seat belts, Artom climbed into my lap, and I’m actually regretting how short this flight is because I’m going to be upset when he has to go back to his seat.
He is mine. There’s absolutely no doubt within me. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t look even a little like me.
Or that he looks so much like Vasily.
Everything Tony said made sense in a way so much of what Vasily had already told me didn’t.
Not just the stuff in the apartment; it goes right down to the tan on my ring finger.
He never explained why I was in Orlando either.
And the sexual chemistry between us was undeniable, but was that because it was the only thing we ever had?
It makes me nauseous just thinking of it that way. We didn’t have anything. If Tony was telling the truth, Vasily captured me and raped me for two weeks. And that’s why I have Artom.
I hug him more tightly just to remind myself that it doesn’t matter how I got Artom; it only matters that I have him.
And I’m sure the feeling of heartbreak inside me is just the whiplash of the day. I’m relieved to finally have the truth, I am.
I am so happy.
“Are you crying because you remember it now, Mommy?”
“No, I’m happy. It’s happy crying.”
“Ohhhh, you like happy crying, Mommy.”
“Do I?”
He pulls back enough so he can stare at me, and he is way too close, so close that I can see the sticky residue on his lips from the lollipop the attendant gave him to help with the air pressure during take-off.
“Yeah, Mommy. You cried when I gra-dated Kindergarten and when you opened the restaurant and when Miss Tia gave me flowers to give you on Mommy Day and-and-and when that song made you think of Daddy and—”
It’s a jolt hearing him say that. I hold back from asking him what the song was. He probably doesn’t even know. But I’m shocked I mentioned Vasily to him.
Artom was so close to his father just now, and he had no idea. I won’t tell him, not until I get something more than these small blips back, but I should tell him in the future. I think I’d be upset if I’d met my father briefly and no one told me.
“—and when I jumped off the diving board all by myself and when we adopted Mr. Snuggles.”
I look to Tony, terrified that there’s a cat back in Orlando that’s surely dead since no one’s fed it for at least a week.
Tony shakes his head rapidly, mouths ‘garden snake,’ and swipes his finger across his throat in the universal ‘dead’ gesture.
Oh man, I hope I didn’t kill that garden snake. Are garden snakes even bad? I feel like they eat mice.
Artom and I chat for a while, and there are definitely happy tears over how unfazed Artom is about the amnesia.
After a half hour of silly questions, embarrassing stories, and an extremely detailed play synopsis of the video game Tony bought him – and I’m not sure I approve of, since I don’t remember if I’ve bought him video games – Artom yawns once and passes out.
In the quiet that follows, I refuse to let my mind travel to all of my doubts.
There’s no point in it. Whether I get my memories back or not, I have a kid to take care of.
And since Tony had him and Tony was apparently listed as next of kin, not Vasily, I have to assume that this is where I wanted to end up if Artom and I ever got separated .
But I don’t like Tony. I had that bad feeling about him when Vasily first gave me his name— gave me a fake name but not Tony— and the feeling hasn’t changed.
He’s hugged me, he’s contributed some stories of his own, and Artom is clearly enamored of him, but my feelings haven’t changed.
I let myself stew on that, and although it takes some time, I finally realize what’s wrong.
“Why has Artom never met you?”
Tony looks up from the phone he’s been flipping through for the last few minutes. Not typing, not reading, just scrolling.
“He has met me,” Tony says.
“He said he didn’t know you. When you came to get him, you were a stranger.”
“Ah.” Tony nods. “When Vasily returned you, I sent you to culinary school. It was something you wanted to do, and it was a bad time, so I think it was good for you. I wanted you to come back home afterward, of course, but I guess you just didn’t want anything to do with Arizona or that house or—there’s something you need to know,” he rushes out with a shameful hanging of his head.
But since Vasily told me innumerable lies, I have a good feeling that what Tony is about to confess is one of the unquestionable truths. “You’re Mafia?”
Tony sags with relief. “Good, I didn’t want to freak you out.”
“I don’t think that’s possible. Last night in bed, Vasily pulled a gun while we—”
“Lacey, I love you, but I don’t want to know what you were doing in bed.”
I laugh. I nearly attempt to assure him that at that point, we were only sleeping .
“I’ve already had to see too much.”
“What does that mean?” I squawk loudly enough that Artom jolts and I do some quick rubs on his back to calm him back down. “What does that mean?” I repeat under my breath.
“Nothing. Pretend I didn’t say that. It’s for your own good.
The important thing here is you wanted out.
Out of Arizona, my house, the Mafia, everything.
And I wasn’t going to force you to stay, not when you’d end up married to one of my guys and spend the rest of your life dealing with Mafia wife drama.
You know how it goes. You didn’t deserve that.
So I bought you a little house in Florida, and I promised I’d never visit you there if only to keep you safe.
” He says it with big, sad, but hopeful eyes.
He failed me. Whether he had any control over it or not, I was not kept safe. No one kept me safe. If there’s any truth to anything Vasily said, and I’m too spun right now to convince myself that it was all lies, Vasily failed me, too. Dima failed me.
I failed myself. I failed my son. And I may have just repeated the past.
“Tony, I know you just said you don’t want to know this stuff, but I... I might be pregnant again.”
He looks exhausted with me for all of half second— yeah, he’s helped me out over the years, but he’s probably a bit of a dick— and then starts to laugh.
“What?” I huff. “This could be a real problem! I don’t—do I want another kid? Can I? Like, if I’m pregnant, will it mess everything—?”
“Lacey, shh. You can’t be pregnant.”
“Well, how do you know that?” I ask, although actually, I could be on birth control. Probably I’m making a big deal out of nothing .
“When you gave birth to Artom, you hemorrhaged badly. The doctors did what they had to, and that ended up being a hysterectomy. You don’t have a uterus anymore.”
Vasily’s apartment was sterile, empty. Soulless. I don’t know that even Vasily truly lived there.
Then again, Vasily might be soulless. The only thing I can figure after what he just put me through is he’s a sociopath and I was an easy target. I didn’t believe everything that he said, but I believed enough.
I loved him. And that hurts a lot.
But the love I feel in Tony’s home helps.
It’s the house I grew up in. Our mom left us when I was a baby, but there are tons of pictures with my dad and me, and some of them trigger something close but not quite memories.
These moments existed, and I was happy. And losing Dad in high school was devastating, but I don’t need Tony to tell me that.
The tears that spring up when I see the pictures make it clear.
“That’s your grandpa,” I tell Artom.
“I know. We have pictures of him at home. Other home. He gave you your necklace.” Artom gasps dramatically. “Where’s your necklace, Mommy?”
The necklace.
Vasily remembered it. He knew it was important to me.
But I can’t think about that.
“I’m not sure,” I tell Artom. “Friends are looking for it.” Hopefully, they really are friends. I liked Sasha and Gio and even the doctors.
Tony’s house is warm, but I know he lives here alone now.
Well, other than Artom, who says he loves it here and hopes his friends can spend the night soon because he got to spend the night at their house yesterday.
That freaks me out some, but when I ply Artom for details, he says they weren’t strangers at all; we went to Disney World with them last summer.
When Vasily told me we were meeting Camilla today, the name was meaningless, but I’ve got a picture of her and me on my teenage vanity, and as soon as I see us together at the beach as gangly pre-teens, I know it’s Camilla, and I know we still talk.
That’s who Artom spent the night with. Her family.
“We’ll see them tomorrow,” I promise Artom, hoping it’s a promise I can keep. I don’t have any way to communicate with her. What with everything that’s happened with Vasily, I don’t have a phone or anything. And the tale that Vasily spun this morning about meeting them?
Well, I don’t know what happened there. I don’t know why Vasily would have ever agreed to meet my brother and why he wouldn’t have told me he was going to bring Artom. Why did Vasily even want to see him?