13
Darina
Gleb came to Zarya after closing on a Thursday, which told me before he'd said a single word that whatever he was bringing me had finally crossed whatever line he'd been waiting for it to cross.
He'd called ahead, which Gleb never did — he simply appeared, the way water finds a leak, and the fact that he'd texted first, asking if I'd be alone, asking specifically that I not mention it to Vadim or Yegor beforehand, had kept me distracted through the entire last hour of service, pouring tea with hands that weren't steady and hoping none of my regulars noticed.
I'd nearly scalded myself twice, refilling the same glass for Lyuba Orlova three times because I kept losing count of how full it already was, and by the time the last customer finally wandered out into the evening, I'd abandoned any pretense of finishing my closing routine properly and simply locked the door the moment the street was clear, my hands fumbling the deadbolt twice before it finally caught.
The building settled into its evening quiet around me while I waited, the hush of a banya cooling down for the night, stones still faintly warm in the back room, the smell of eucalyptus thinning slowly into something more like memory than presence.
I'd always found that hour peaceful, the building exhaling after a day of other people's noise.
That Thursday it felt instead like waiting for a verdict, every small creak of the old building's settling making my pulse jump in a way it had no business jumping.
"You look like you haven't slept," I said, locking the front door behind him, leading him back toward the office where my grandmother's old desk still sat exactly where she'd left it, scarred and ink-stained from forty years of careful use.
"I haven't, much. Not the last few nights.
" He set a worn manila folder on the desk between us, his hands lingering on it a moment longer than necessary, the hesitation of a man about to hand someone a weight he can't take back once it's been handed over.
"I told myself I'd wait until I was certain.
I don't think certain is a thing I'm going to get to, Dari.
I think I've to decide whether probable is enough to act on, and I wanted you to decide that with me instead of for me. "
"Show me."
He opened the folder and slid a single page across the desk — not the original, I realized, but a careful photocopy, the kind a methodical man makes specifically so the original stays protected somewhere safer than a folder that travels.
It was a note in our father's handwriting, the same careful, looping script that had filled out twenty years of invoices and tax forms, dated three weeks before the accident.
Found discrepancy in Q3 manifests — three shipments, duty stamps don't match the customs filing. Numbers too clean to be a clerical error. Need to ask B. directly before I take this further. Don't want to assume the worst, but the math only works one way and I don't like the way it works.
I read it twice, then a third time, my eyes catching on the same three letters each pass. "Who's B."
"I don't know for certain. That's the honest answer, and I want to give you the honest answer instead of the satisfying one.
" Gleb pulled out the chair across from me and sat, slowly, like a man lowering himself into water he wasn't sure was warm or cold yet.
"I've been going through every name Papa would have reported a discrepancy like this to.
There aren't many candidates. He didn't report to rank-and-file — discrepancies at this level, in the actual ledgers rather than a single shipment, those went up, not sideways.
I can think of exactly two men whose names start with B who'd have had the authority to be the person he was planning to ask. "
"Say them."
"I'd rather not, yet. Not until I've ruled one of them out properly.
" He held my gaze, steady, asking for something I wasn't sure I had the right to give him.
"I need you to trust me on this specifically, Dari, more than I've asked you to trust me on anything else.
If I say a name out loud right now, before I'm sure, it becomes a thing that exists in the world whether or not it's true.
I've watched what unproven things do to families like ours.
I don't want to do that to anyone — including whoever the wrong guess turns out to implicate — until I actually know. "
"That's not fair, Gleb. You're asking me to sit with this not knowing while you already have two names narrowed down."
"I know it isn't fair. I don't have a fairer option to offer you.
" Something pained crossed his face, the first real crack in his composure since he'd walked in.
"If I'm wrong about one of them — if I let a name like that loose in this family on a hunch that turns out to be nothing — I'll have done something to that person that can't be undone just because I apologize for it afterward.
People don't forget being suspected. I've watched it happen to men in this community who were cleared a year later and never quite got their reputation back regardless.
I'm not willing to do that to anyone on a guess, even a guess that's kept me awake for two weeks straight. "
"What if it's someone I'd need to know about. Right away. Someone close to us."
Something flickered across his face, careful, deliberate.
"If I thought either of us was in immediate danger, I'd tell you tonight, full names, no waiting.
I don't think we're. I think whatever this is, it's old enough now that the people involved have had fifteen years to feel safe about it.
I'd rather use the time that gives us than waste it by moving too fast and tipping someone off before I actually have something solid. "
"How would you even rule one of them out. What would that look like, practically."
"Records, mostly. Boring ones. Who had access to the customs paperwork that year, who signed off on what, whether either man's other dealings from that period line up with carelessness or with something more deliberate.
" He rubbed his eyes, the exhaustion of two sleepless weeks finally showing through.
"It's slow work. I'm not trained for this, not really — I just have Papa's instinct for numbers and considerably more patience than either of our brothers would have for it.
I'm doing the best I can with what I've."
"You're doing more than anyone should have to do alone, Gleb. I want you to hear that plainly, not just as something I'm saying to make you feel better about carrying it."
"Maybe. I don't really know how to stop now that I've started.
" He managed something close to a smile, tired and small.
"I think some part of me has needed this for fifteen years without admitting it — something to actually do about it, instead of just carrying the grief around like a stone in my pocket the way the rest of us have.
Even if it turns out to be nothing. Even if the note's just a man worrying about a clerical error he never got the chance to resolve. "
"Do you think it's nothing."
"No." He said it quietly, with a weight of a man finally admitting something to himself as much as to the person across from him.
"I don't think it's nothing. I think it's the realest thing I've found in fifteen years of believing a story that never quite explained the specific way Papa looked at Mama the last month of his life.
Scared. Not of the Maletins — scared the way you're scared of someone you still have to be polite to at dinner. "
I sat with the photocopy in my hands, my father's handwriting blurring slightly as my eyes filled despite every effort not to let them.
"He knew. Three weeks before they died, he already knew something was wrong, and he didn't tell Mama, or he did and she didn't tell us, and either way they got into that car on an ordinary Tuesday already carrying something the rest of us never got to carry with them, never got the chance to help them carry at all. "
"I think so. Yes." Gleb's voice had gone rough, the careful blankness finally cracking at the edges.
"I think about that a great deal, actually — whether they knew what they were driving toward, or whether it really was as random and as cruel as we've always told ourselves it was.
I don't know which answer I want more, honestly.
Some days I want it to have been random, because random doesn't implicate anyone we have to keep loving afterward.
Some days I want it to have been exactly what this note suggests, because at least then there's someone to actually be angry at instead of just the universe. "
"What do we do."
"I keep looking. Carefully, quietly, without telling Vadim yet — he'll want to act the second he has a name, and acting too soon is exactly how this gets buried again instead of actually surfacing properly, the way it should have surfaced fifteen years ago.
" He reached across the desk and took my hand, the same steadying gesture from the kitchen sink weeks earlier.
"And I need you to stay quiet too, Dari.
Not forever. Just until I know enough to be useful instead of just frightening.
Can you do that? I'm asking a great deal of you, I realize that, and I wouldn't ask if I'd a better option to offer either of us. "