SIX #2
I knock again, louder this time. I hear movement inside, then a pause by the door, as if whoever is on the other side is trying to decide whether I’m worth answering the door for.
When the door opens, Cassie looks at me like she has had to fight her way up from underwater to do it.
My irritation drops clean out from under me.
She is too thin in the face, and her hair is tied back badly.
There are shadows under her eyes that are dark enough that I almost confuse them with bruises.
She has one of Niko’s jumpers on over leggings and socks, and there is a smear of something pale on the front of the sleeve that might be formula or porridge or both.
“Arseny,” she says, voice rough with surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“I was in the area,” I lie.
She looks past me down the corridor as if checking whether I have brought a marching band. “You were in the area. On purpose?”
“Depends on how welcoming you plan to be.” That gets the tiniest twitch at one corner of her mouth. It’s barely there, but I’ll take it.
“I’m not dressed properly.”
“You’re wearing clothes. That meets the legal minimum.”
Cassie closes her eyes for a second, and I can’t tell if she is tired enough to laugh or tired enough to cry.
“Come in,” she says at last, stepping back.
The flat is warm and there are signs of life everywhere without any real order. A bottle on the coffee table. Tiny socks hanging off the arm of the sofa. A blanket half on the floor. A mug in the kitchen sink.
Nothing catastrophic.
Vladimir is asleep in his cot in the front room by the window, bundled up and breathing through his mouth. I step closer automatically, checking him the way everyone checks sleeping babies. “He was up half the night,” Cassie says.
“I can tell,” I reply, giving her a second look over. She doesn’t say anything. Instead, she goes to the kitchen, fills the kettle, then stands there with one hand on the counter as it heats, staring into space.
I watch her for a moment before I shrug off my jacket and sit at the small table.
“Are you going to make tea,” I say, “or is this one of those modern homes where guests hydrate themselves?”
“I wasn’t expecting you,” she says, glancing over her shoulder.
“No, but here I am. Lucky you.”
She brings over two mugs and sits opposite me, curling both hands around hers even though the tea is too hot to drink. Up close, she looks even worse. Her skin has that washed-out, overused look people get when they have stopped sleeping properly for too long.
“Niko told you to come?” she asks.
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
I want to say, “because my brother is fraying at the edges, and you look like you might already be five steps ahead of him. Because every time he says your name lately, he sounds like he is bracing for impact. Because I don’t trust either of you to admit how bad this has got.
” Instead, I take a sip of tea. “Because Niko’s worried. ”
Cassie lowers her eyes to the mug. “He worries too much.”
“Niko worries exactly the right amount when he thinks something is wrong. The problem is he usually tries to do it silently, which makes him unbearable.”
That nearly gets another smile. Nearly.
“He said I’m struggling?” she asks after a minute.
“He said enough to make me get in that car outside, which means either things are bad or I have finally gone soft in the head.”
“I’m just tired,” she whispers, her fingers tightening around the mug.
I look at her, and she looks back for maybe two seconds before her gaze slips away.
“Cassie,” I say gently, “I didn’t drive two hours for ‘just tired.’” She presses her lips together, then lets out a breath through her nose that sounds halfway to a laugh and halfway to breaking.
For a second, I think she is going to brush me off.
Tell me she’s fine, the baby has been difficult, she only needs sleep, whatever version sounds the least serious.
“Some days I wake up, and I think I can do it. I think I can get him fed and dressed and keep the flat clean and maybe even go outside for an hour if the weather isn’t too bad, and I make all these little plans in my head like a normal person, and then I’m just...
” She shakes her head. “I’m not moving. I’m standing in the kitchen staring at the cupboard, and twenty minutes have gone by.
” I say nothing; her eyes stay on the table.
“I don’t always know what day it is,” she says.
“Or I do know, and it still feels wrong somehow, like I’ve missed one.
I keep thinking I hear him crying when he isn’t.
I hear him from the other room, I run in, and he’s asleep, then I feel stupid because I swear I heard him. ”
She laughs then, letting out a short, miserable breath. “Yesterday I checked the cot four times in ten minutes because I was sure something had happened to him. There wasn’t any reason for it. My head just wouldn’t leave me alone.”
I lean back in the chair, careful not to react too hard, because I get the sense she’ll stop if she thinks I’m shocked. “Niko knows this much?” I ask, she hesitates, which tells me enough. “How much does he know?”
“He knows I’ve been having a hard time.”
“Cassie—”
“He knows some of it.” She rubs at one eye with the heel of her hand. “He knows I’m not sleeping properly, and I get overwhelmed. When he comes home, I panic when he has to leave.”
“How bad?”
Her laugh this time is flat. “Bad enough that I count how long he’s been gone. If he’s later than he says he’s going to be, I start thinking something’s happened.”
“Has anything happened here?” I ask, looking at the front door without meaning to.
“What do you mean?”
“You know, anything... unusual.”
“I took the baby out two days ago and ended up three streets over because I thought I was going the other way. I know the area. I just... I looked up and didn’t know why I was there.”
I rest my forearms on the table and look at her properly. “You can’t stay here on your own like this.”
“I’m not a bad mother,” she blurts out. There it is. The real fear under all of it.
“No one said you were,” I say firmly, holding her gaze.
“But that’s what people will think.”
“I’m people, and I don’t think that.”
“I love him,” she says, her voice shaking.
“Even when I’m tired, or when I’m angry, even when I want ten minutes where nobody needs me, I love him.
I know when he’s hungry, when his cry means a wet nappy and when it means wind.
I know how he likes to be held when he’s fussy. I know all of that. I’m trying.”
“I know you are.”
“I’m trying so hard.”
“I know,” I say gently. She covers her mouth with one hand and bows her head, crying quietly, the kind of crying people do when they’ve been keeping a lid on it for too long and no longer have the strength for dignity.
I get up, walk around the table, and crouch beside her so I am not towering over her.
I’m not good at this part. Niko got the easy charm.
Still, I put a hand lightly between her shoulder blades and I keep it there.
“You’re not failing because this is hard,” I say.
“You are failing only if you pretend nothing is wrong until something worse happens, and you are not going to do that. Understand?” She nods once, crying into her hand. “Good.”
I wait until her breathing evens out a little before I move back to my chair.