Iskra
Memories flooded back of the many trips I’d made to this graveyard with Radovan and Tau as Bogdan parked the car. Vadim unclipped Runa from her baby seat and her cheerful babbling brought me back to the present. Bogdan opened my door before rushing around to do the same for Vadim.
I waited for him to join me before we walked the path together.
Autumn was leaving and winter was beginning to show. The snow and ice were part of Chernograd’s charm—they made even the graveyard look scenic.
Vadim placed his arm around my waist.
No words were spoken.
No words were required.
I leaned into him.
It wasn’t until we turned into Makari’s row that I realised Vadim knew exactly where he was, even in the snow.
The last time I had been here he had taken Runa from me. It all seemed so long ago now.
We stopped at his grave.
Runa began to fight against Vadim’s hold, reaching for me. He tried to pacify her but I smiled and held my arms out. She looked like a little doll in her red woollen coat and matching hat, cheeks pink from the cold, displaying every tooth she had as she clutched the fur at my neck.
I crouched and balanced her on my knee.
“Look—this is Makari. He would have been your older brother,” I whispered, kissing her rosy cheek.
She didn’t care, and I couldn’t blame her. The world was her playground. She swung down and slapped the snow coating his grave, giggling as her gloved hand sent it flying.
“Come on, printsessa. Give mama a moment,” Vadim said, lifting her up.
She made her unhappy grunting noises.
“She sounds like you when you don’t get your way,” I said, glancing up at him.
“Ma,” she said with a grunt.
I stared at her before looking at Vadim.
“Mamama. Mama.”
My eyes flew back to Runa as I slowly stood. I took her from Vadim and tilted my face briefly toward the grey sky before holding her close.
I don’t know how or why, but it felt like a blessing from Makari.
The blessed.
The name my friend Tau had inadvertently given him.
“Good girl, Runa,” Vadim said, passing a tissue to me. “Say it again. Mama.”
“Nit.”
“Nyet, say mama.”
“Nit.”
I left them to it. He took her from me as they continued their argument while I knelt in the snow and prayed for Makari.
It was difficult to erase the guilt.
For my immature feelings back then.
For moving forward.
I glanced at Vadim holding Runa in the air, circling slowly on the spot.
“You would have been so loved, my son,” I whispered, kissing my fingertips before resting them on the edge of his headstone.
We stayed until Runa began to fuss. Vadim had his time beside Makari. I knew he’d visited before—not because anyone had told me, but because it was simply something I knew.
The visit was bittersweet.
The ride home was quiet, Runa asleep between us.
Vadim never let go of my hand.
They rested over Runa’s car seat together—his fingers moving slowly across the back of mine.
All he did was make the tears fall faster.
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It took a few days to pull myself back from the past. There was nothing I could do to change it—and Runa needed the best version of me. Then there was the new baby, growing in leaps and bounds inside my belly, making themselves known a little more each day.
Vadim was kissing it morning, noon and night.
The warm press of his lips against my skin had become as routine as breathing—reverent in a way he would never be in any other context.
He did it so often that Runa had begun to copy him, pressing her small open mouth to my stomach with tremendous seriousness.
It was considerably cuter when she did it.
I wouldn’t put it past him to measure me while I slept. He kept circling his fingers around my belly—that slow, proprietary motion—and reporting back daily on any increase in size. As though I weren’t the one carrying it.
I loved our routine.
I fed and bathed Runa while he took nappy and lifting duty without complaint.
It allowed me to rest through the tired spells that arrived without warning and flattened me.
Growing a human wasn’t easy. But I was grateful for every symptom, every ache, every morning I woke heavy with it—because every time Runa learned something new or had a growth spurt my heart sank a little at how fast she was moving away from the beginning of her.
She would be almost a year and a half when the baby arrived. The new cycle would start and I wouldn’t grieve Runa’s independence quite so much. That was all life was—different phases to adapt to, one after another.
I sighed and kissed her warm cheek before her father swept her off to her cot with the efficiency of a man who had also clocked her tired eyes before I had.
There would be morning cuddle times soon enough.
I watched him walk back across the room.
Regardless of weather or occasion he wore shorts that hung from his hips, and when he moved his way back toward me there was a rhythm to the bulge beneath that I had entirely given up pretending not to notice.
I was still cataloguing his seductive moves when something landed on the bed beside me.
A cream and gold gift bag.
I really didn’t need any more jewellery.
“I missed your birthday,” he said. “Since you blew up my house and ran away.”
“Are you ever going to let that go?” I said, rolling my eyes, but I lifted the bag. He did have good taste.
It was heavy.
Too heavy for jewellery.
I glanced at him as he settled on the bed beside me.
“Go on.”
I opened the bag and drew out the cream tissue paper. Beneath it, solid and cool against my palms, was a thick block of glass.
The etched image registered before I read the name.
Makari’s scan picture—his small curled shape immortalised in the glass—and his name engraved below it in clean simple letters.
The weight of it in my hands. The cool smooth surface under my fingertips.
“Now you can see him all the time,” Vadim whispered.
“I thought it was lost,” I said, tears sliding freely down my cheeks as I traced the tiny curve of his skull and then the shape of his hand.
“I kept it.”
I set it carefully on my lap and put my arms around his neck. No sobs. Just tears, falling steadily, soaking into his collar. He didn’t pull back. He didn’t speak. He just held me—one hand moving slowly through my hair, the other tracing the length of my back.
I don’t know how long we stayed like that.
Long enough.
Long enough to know the man who held me was besotted with his family.
Past and present.