35. Taylor
TAYLOR
Three weeks later, the first thing I notice is the coffee. It smells wrong and has been smelling wrong for weeks now. Not bad, exactly. Burnt. Bitter.
I stop halfway into the kitchen. Nikita sits at the far end reading the newspaper. She looks up over the top of it. “Yes?” she asks.
I take another step into the room. The smell hits me again. My stomach twists. “The coffee. You can drink it?”
What is left of her overplucked eyebrows knit together. She looks from the coffee to me. “Yes?”
I unplug the coffeepot and sit across from Nikita. A plate appears in front of me. Eggs. The sight of them makes my stomach turn harder. I push the plate away.
Nikita folds the newspaper and places it beside her plate. “You are not hungry?”
“I had something late last night.”
“What?”
I try to remember. “A cracker.”
“One cracker?”
“It was a large cracker.”
“There is no such thing.”
Nikita’s coffee is too close to my nose. My stomach rolls, and I push it away from me. She watches all of this in silence, which irritates me.
“Are you going to keep staring at me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You are interesting this morning.”
“I’m exhausted and nauseous. That’s not interesting.”
Her eyes sharpen. “Nauseous?”
I shrug. “Probably something I ate.”
“But you only ate one…large cracker?”
“Maybe it was a bad cracker.”
Nikita leans back in her chair. Her gaze moves over my face. “Tell me, are you willing to be tied to Mikhail forever?”
The question is so strange that it breaks through everything else. “What?”
“Answer me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You understand the words.”
“Not why you’re asking.”
Her expression hardens. “Because men like my son do not let go easily.”
The room tilts slightly. I lower myself back into the chair.
Nikita sits beside me rather than returning to her place across the table, close enough that our shoulders almost touch. “He would protect you,” she continues. “He would provide for you. He would put the world beneath your feet if he thought it would keep you near him.”
“That doesn’t sound terrible.”
“No. It does not. That is why it is dangerous.”
I think of the market. A fox pin becoming an entire stall. One request to go outside becoming four guards and an armored car. A room bigger than my apartment. Protection and possession have started to look dangerously similar.
“He wouldn’t hurt me,” I say.
“No?” she asks, reaching over the table for my hands.
I give them to her and she flips them over, stroking my wrists. There is no mark there, only a memory. I flinch at it. “We are in love, Nikita. We weren’t then.”
She reaches into the pocket of her robe. She places a small paper bag on the table. The pharmacy logo is printed across the front.
“What is this?” I laugh weakly, confused, pulling a box out of it.
I stare at a pregnancy test. I feel like I’m staring into its eyes, like it’s a monster. My throat tightens. “Oh, Nikita, that’s ridiculous. This is invasive.”
“When did you last bleed?”
The question is so direct that for a moment I think I’ve misunderstood her. “What?”
“Your monthly bleeding.”
“I know what you meant. I’m not going to tell you that.”
“If there is a child,” she says, “he will consider you his family.”
“That doesn’t mean he would—”
“Yes,” she says. “It does.” I look at her. She’s not trying to scare me. She’s trying to help me. Which is scaring the shit out of me. “How late?”
I stare at her. She stares back. Something cold begins to spread beneath my ribs. Not fear. Not yet. A warning.
I take out my phone. My fingers feel clumsy as I open the calendar.
I don’t track every period. I’m not that organized.
But I remember the last one because it started the morning of an important meeting, and I had spent the first half of it silently furious at every man in the room for having a functioning uterus-free body.
I scroll back. Then further. My thumb stops. The kitchen seems suddenly too quiet. Nikita watches my face.
“I’m not.” It comes out immediately. Too quickly.
Her eyes don’t move. I count again. Then again, as though the dates might rearrange themselves if I stare long enough. Sixteen days. “It’s nothing,” I say.
“You are tired.”
“I’ve been through a lot.”
“You are nauseous.”
“I ate something.”
“You are sensitive to smells.”
I stop arguing.
“When did you first sleep with my son?”
I choke on air. “I am not discussing that with you.”
“Then I will estimate.”
“There is no need to estimate.”
“Nearly six weeks ago?”
I stand so abruptly that my chair scrapes against the floor. “This is insane.”
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“Taylor.” Her voice is not loud. It does not need to be.
I remain standing. My heart is beating too fast. “This is stress,” I say. “That’s all.”
“It may be.”
“It is.”
“Then there is no reason to be frightened.”
“I’m not frightened.”
Nikita looks at me with something almost like pity. I hate it.
“We were careful.”
Nikita’s face softens. “Careful is not impossible.”
I look down at my phone again. Sixteen days late? My stomach turns, but this time I don’t know whether it is nausea or panic.
Nikita rises. She comes around the table slowly, as though approaching an animal that might bolt, and gives me the bag again. “Just…take them and see.”
“Them?”
“I bought three.”
“Why three?”
“Because one can be wrong, and two can disagree.”
Despite everything, a breath of laughter escapes me. It sounds close to hysteria. “What happens if it’s—they’re—positive?”
“That is for you to decide.”
“Mikhail will decide.”
“No.” Her voice cuts through mine. “He will believe he should. That is different.” Nikita takes my hand. Her fingers are cool and firm. “If you want to leave, I will help you.”
The words settle heavily between us. I pull my hand back. “He’s your son.”
“Yes.”
“He would never forgive you.”
“No.” She says it without hesitation.
I stare at her. “Why?”
Nikita looks toward the windows. The gardens beyond them are pale beneath a gray sky. The walls are too far away to see from here, but I feel them anyway. “Because once,” she says, “no one gave me the choice.”
I close my fingers around the paper bag.
Mikhail’s at work. It’s still morning. I have close to eight hours to take these tests, so why does it feel like I’m against the clock?
The bathroom upstairs is warm and painfully bright. Nikita waits outside the door. I can see the shadow of her shoes beneath it. The first test rests on the marble counter. It is a small, ordinary piece of plastic. I hate that something so cheap can divide a life into before and after.
I read the instructions twice. Then a third time. My hands shake so badly I nearly drop it. When I’m done, I place the test flat beside the sink and set the timer on my phone.
Three minutes. I sit on the edge of the bathtub. My knee bounces. I try not to think about Mikhail. I think about him anyway. The way he looked at me in the kitchen while I laughed with his mother. The way his hands moved over piano keys.
Would he be happy? The thought scares me more than his anger would.
He would be happy. Not simply pleased. Possessively, terrifyingly happy. A child would give him a reason to build higher walls. A reason to choose for me. A reason to never let me become temporary.
My phone buzzes. I don’t move. The sound stops. The bathroom is silent again.
“Taylor?” Nikita asks through the door.
“One second.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine.
I stand. The distance between the bathtub and the sink feels enormous. I cross it anyway.
For one last moment, I don’t look. I stare at my own reflection. Pale face. Messy hair. Eyes too wide. I look like a woman waiting for someone else’s life to begin.
Then I lower my gaze. Two lines.
Clear. Unmistakable.
Positive.
I grip the edge of the sink. The world does not change. The lights stay on. The pipes hum quietly in the walls. Somewhere downstairs, a door closes.
But everything is different. Everything.
There’s a soft knock. “Taylor?”
I open the door. Nikita is standing there. She looks at my face, then at the test in my hand. Neither of us speaks.
I press my palm against my stomach. There’s nothing to feel. No movement. No proof except two pink lines and the sudden, impossible certainty that I am no longer alone inside my own body.
Nikita reaches for me. I let her. The test remains clutched between my fingers as she pulls me into her arms. Over her shoulder, I stare down the long corridor toward the staircase. Toward the front doors. Toward the room where Mikhail will find me when he comes home.
Positive.
The word beats through me with my pulse.
Positive.
Positive.
Positive.
“You will take the other two. Maybe they will be different,” Nikita says into my shoulder, but I know what they will say.