30. Delilah #2
“Don’t thank me, Lilah. I’m only doing what is right.” Kane rises. “Let’s go rejoin the party.”
As usual, accepting gratitude for an emotionally thoughtful act seems to make him very squeamish.
We return to the dining room for coffee and whatever remains of dessert. Niko is guarding a second slice of honey cake with a serving knife laid across his plate.
“For you,” he explains as I sit. “I had to guard it from six children and a grandmother.”
The grandmother in question smacks the back of his head.
“As you can see,” he adds, “I suffered a lot on your behalf.”
I giggle and accept the cake.
The gathering has softened and settled during our absence.
Two children sleep across their parents’ laps.
An older man tells a story in Russian while everyone interrupts repeatedly to dispute the details.
Coffee has replaced vodka for most of the adults, although Yuri appears committed to honoring both beverages at once.
I watch happily as I munch on the honey cake, content to simply be in the same room as people who are enjoying themselves and each other like these people are.
When I finish the cake, I stand and reach for Niko’s empty plate so I can take the dirty cutlery to the kitchen.
His hand comes down on it first. “No.”
“I’m getting up anyway.”
From his other side, the grandmother points a gnarled finger at me. “Sit.”
Anton joins from across the room. “Sit, Ms. Dorsey.”
I look at Kane. “Are they always this bossy?”
“I taught them well.”
Niko pulls his empty plate out of my reach, then leans over and takes my stuff from my hands, too. “You brought the food. Now, you sit there and relax, okay? You’ve done enough. Let other people take care of you.”
Well… okay then.
I stay seated.
It’s an odd position for me. Very new.
Nobody asks me to refill a cup. Nobody hands me a serving dish. The conversation flows around me, and when an older woman tells a story about Kane at age eight, she touches my wrist before delivering the best part to make sure I am listening.
I have spent my life earning my place in rooms. Tonight, they say I simply belong here.
I look toward the old photograph again, the one that made Kane turn inward earlier.
A woman stands behind the crowded table with a dish in her hands. Every other guest has a plate.
She has nothing but the dish.
“Was your mother from Sunset Park?” I ask Kane.
His head turns toward me. “Yes.”
“Near the waterfront?”
He takes a sip of coffee before he answers. “She grew up there.”
“What was her name?”
His gaze moves to the photograph. “Viktoriya.”
“Viktoriya. That’s pretty. What was she like?”
Kane keeps his attention on the woman in the frame. “Warm. Soft. She loved to feed her people.”
“Your father didn’t appreciate that?”
“He took it for granted.”
I think of the seat Kane reserved for me. My name written on the card. His hand stopping mine when I tried to serve a fourth platter.
“She went back to Sunset Park?”
“After the marriage ended, yes. It was the place she loved most in this world.”
“Did you go with her?”
“No,” he whispers, his voice hoarse and haunted. “I did not.”
Around us, his family keeps laughing. A little girl with white-blonde hair sleeps soundly in her father’s lap, with one sparkly ballet flat dangling from her toes.
Something occurs to me suddenly. A bunch of connections that all form at once.
I remember Kane walking through Sunset Park on Christmas Eve, calling it “his” neighborhood.
I remember Ekaterina recognizing the boy beneath the tattoos.
I remember asking why my building mattered and getting no answer.
“Does your mother have something to do with why you wanted the bakery?”
Kane’s face shutters at once. He looks toward Niko, then the old men, then all the children asleep against people who will take them home.
“Not tonight, Lilah.”
He has answered many of my questions with silence. He has dismissed others or changed the subject.
This is the first time I hear later inside his refusal.
I don’t push him in front of his family.
But I take the question home.
Stepan drops me at the Sheepshead Bay house after midnight. Anton and Yuri have packed enough leftovers into the trunk to sustain me through a moderate natural disaster.
“You know I own a bakery,” I tell Stepan as he stacks containers in my arms. “Food access is not a major concern.”
“They said you have to take it.”
“Who is they?”
“Everyone.”
He closes the trunk and waits until I am inside before returning to the car.
The house is dark and newly mine. I take the containers to the kitchen, put my envelope beside them, and go upstairs.
My new bedroom still smells faintly of fresh paint. The photograph of Kane kissing me stands on the bedside table.
My phone shows eighty-three messages in the Makov chat. Niko has sent the family photograph again with a caption.
Evidence that Kane Makov once experienced happiness. Download before he destroys it.
I open the full image. As always, my first instinct is to inspect myself and find everything that’s wrong. My dress pulls across my middle. My hair is messy. My skin is imperfect.
Then I stop searching for flaws and look again at Kane.
He is looking at me.
For the first time in my life, I save a family photograph.
Just because I like where I am in it.