Chapter 8
Nadya
THE APARTMENT LOOKED like it had been hit by a tornado that specialized in salt and sugar.
Takeout boxes sat on the coffee table, crowding out a landfill’s worth of candy wrappers, paper napkins, and two empty bottles of wine.
Wedged among them, a neat pyramid of Tupperware, the kind you only see in Instagram fridge organization reels.
Artichoke, salmon, and my favorite—crushed nuts mixed with dry fruit and a dash of honey.
That last one was Vera’s idea of a healthy dessert, and it was actually pretty good. Ljuba must've given her the recipe.
The place was quieter than I’d ever heard it, which was saying something, considering the TV was on full blast with a looping YouTube playlist of cats falling off tables at Ljuba’s request.
I understood the need to have the TV on. I drowned everything out with alcohol and sugar, but Ljuba wasn’t me, and my methods wouldn’t work for her. Funny cat videos, on the other hand, worked just fine. That and alien smut, judging by the books she had stacked in her room.
She was curled up in the corner of the futon, knees to chin, hoodie zipped up to her nose, eyes glassy but laser-fixed on the screen as if feline domestic failures held the secret to recovery.
It's only been a few hours since she got discharged. Physically, she was mostly okay. Scrapes, bruises, and a mild concussion. Mentally, a little brain rot might do her some good.
Vera floated around the kitchen, cleaning up my messes. Since she’d moved in with her boyfriend, Sean, and Ljuba was spending fewer and fewer nights at home, I was the one responsible for all the empty candy wrappers and takeout boxes.
“The sodium in this is off the charts,” she barked, tossing a soy sauce packet into the trash from ten feet. It bounced out and landed next to the recycling bin. She made a sound of disgust but didn’t pick it up.
I dropped onto the armrest of the futon with my takeout container—chicken fried rice.
“Tell me you’re not actually going to eat that,” Vera said, voice thick with judgment.
“It’s called comfort food. You should try it sometime,” I replied, shoveling rice into my mouth, then licking the sauce from my thumb. “Oh wait, you can’t. Because it might have touched sugar.”
She rolled her eyes. “I get more joy from real food than you will ever get from that junk. That stuff is like ninety percent MSG.”
“MSG is a vegetable,” I said. “I read that somewhere.”
Vera rolled her eyes but didn’t argue. Score one for MSG.
Ljuba giggled, which made me want to die with happiness. She was covered in scrapes from when she had jumped out of the car, but in a way, it was a win for her.
The biggest reason she kept having nightmares was this helpless feeling we all had back then. Growing up, we’d known deep in our bones that someone could take everything from us, and there was nothing we could do about it. Except this time, Ljuba had done something about it.
She’d jumped. She’d gotten away long enough for Dan and Nick to find her.
As traumatizing as the whole thing had been, it allowed Ljuba to reclaim a little part of herself. Otherwise, she would've been in a worse shape right now, probably unable to even be inside.
I put the food on the coffee table and went to open a new bottle of wine. I wouldn’t get drunk, not when I was hanging out with my sisters, but I needed something to take the edge off.
After the first sip, I offered to pour Ljuba a glass, and she accepted. Unlike me, she only wanted half a glass. Vera took one too, and we sat down together with me eating my Chinese takeout while Vera and Ljuba stuck to the healthy stuff.
“So, get this, Larisa decides to do an ‘art night.’ She just bought a bunch of acrylic paint and canvases and showed everyone how to do acrylic pours,” I said, after a while, just to see if I could force another laugh out of Ljuba. “It’s like she wants people to stop buying them or something.”
Ljuba cracked up, and I considered it a personal victory.
“I mean, she does keep talking about how much she hates space fillers,” Vera said.
She wasn’t wrong. We had plenty of acrylic pours and other art of that variety at the gallery, and most of it was at the front because it sold well, but Lara hated it with a passion.
Worked in my favor, to be honest. A huge part of the reason she had hired me was because she liked surrealism, which was my whole personality.
Vera started collecting empty cartons and stacking them with terrifying precision, probably to build a tiny tower that would shame me into cleaning up.
After the “art night” story, a lull hovered. The TV flicked from a compilation of pet fails to a home renovation show, sound still jacked up, but the room’s energy had cooled. That was when the rain started.
It came suddenly, drumming on the windows and flattening the world into a wet gray. I watched drops bead on the window until it reminded me too much of tears, so I looked away and stared at my wrist instead. My thumb traced the trio of stars, one for each of us.
A door slammed somewhere in the hallway. Not close, but enough to make the apartment walls vibrate. Ljuba flinched.
Did normal people flinch? Or was this reaction reserved for people like us?
The next sound was the tap of chopsticks against my empty takeout box, and then the wet, choked gasp of some reality show host on TV.
“Can we do cake now?” I asked, already halfway off the futon and headed for the kitchen. Vera scowled but didn’t stop me.
“Only if you clean up your mess first,” she said, as she handed me the tower of takeout boxes.
“I like to think of this as art,” I said, gesturing at the chaos. “It’s a mixed-media installation. See how the hot sauce packets evoke the fleeting nature of—”
“Cake,” Ljuba interrupted. “Please.”
“Cake for the win,” I said, as I went to the kitchen, tossed the takeout boxes and got us each a slice of triple chocolate.
We ate in silence for a minute. The rain thickened, making it feel like we were in a submarine, or a bunker, or something else sealed against the outside. Against my ability to escape.
I wasn’t there anymore, damn it. I was free.
“Are you going to sleep here tonight?” Vera asked Ljuba, her tone the same as when she’d tell us to put on seatbelts or not to run with scissors. “I left the window open just a crack. The balcony might get too wet to sleep there.”
Ljuba made a noncommittal sound. “I think I’ll sleep at Dan’s.” Her eyes flicked toward the window. “I trust him to keep me safe at night, even from my nightmares.”
It hung between us. That unspoken, ugly thing: the knowledge that people could and had come for us in the night.
I felt my pulse spike. My brain lit up with the image of our old house— his house. The deadbolt, window alarms, all those useless measures because they hadn’t kept the real monster away. They had only trapped us in the same house as him.
Vera picked at her cuticle, then got up and started to wash dishes, as if she could clean the memory out of the air.
When I couldn’t stand the tension, I decided it was time for more alcohol, but the first bottle was already empty. I found a new one and worked the corkscrew with paint-stained fingers. My latest project had gotten a little messy, and the stuff hadn’t washed out yet.
“Cheers,” I said, raising my glass.
I would’ve said “cheers to new trauma,” but we didn’t talk about the T word around here. We all knew it was there and ignored it.
Vera gave me a disapproving look but didn’t say anything. Maybe she finally understood that I needed to drown my demons. Or maybe she was giving up on me. I mean, none of her lectures had worked in the past, so why would she think today would be any different?
We started a movie next. Ljuba picked some animated thing where dogs talked, and everyone learned the power of friendship. I watched Ljuba more than the TV, though.
She was the youngest. She was struggling with this the most. And yet, she had reclaimed a piece of herself because she’d done something proactive, so she wouldn’t be a victim. What the hell was I doing besides trying to forget?
Some part of me wanted to just say out loud what had happened to me. All of it. Not just about the house but about those road trips. But my sisters didn’t need that in their heads. They had plenty of their own horrors to deal with.
Vera already felt guilty for not protecting us. If she knew about the road trips, she’d never forgive herself, even though she was as much a victim as Ljuba and I.
I could tell Nick. I had started, so maybe I should tell him everything else. Even though I couldn’t give him all the names, I could give him some information. Maybe we could even find that building, if we took a...
No, that would require us driving, and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
Vera sat rigid at the other end of the futon, legs crossed, arms folded, as if she were watching a documentary on fertilizer production. I sprawled across the floor, head propped on a throw pillow, feet up on the coffee table, doing my best impression of someone utterly relaxed.
Every time the TV volume dipped, Vera would fill the silence with nutrition tips, or a story about her hospital, or a casual, “So, what are your plans for the week, Nadya?” I’d deflect every question with a joke or by pointing at the screen and saying, “Can you believe this animation budget?”
We made it an hour before the movie turned into background noise, and I started scrolling through my phone, pretending to look at memes but really just using it to block out the world.
“Do you think I should change my number?” Ljuba asked suddenly, so sharp it made Vera blink.
I looked up. “Why?”
Ljuba hugged her knees tighter. “George had it. I mean, he won’t be calling me from a prison cell but...” She trailed off.
“Change it,” I said without a second thought.
The times she had gotten calls, ignored them, then would start acting weird flashed through my mind. He might’ve been arrested, but Nick was right; George hadn’t tried to kidnap Ljuba for himself. Other people were involved, and she didn’t need to deal with them.
I felt the familiar itch at my wrist, scratched the blue stars until it stung.
I didn’t want Ljuba’s mind lingering on it, though, so I quickly followed it up with, “Here’s what we do. You give me your old phone, and if anyone calls, I’ll tell them you died in a tragic fudge-related accident. It’s like witness protection but sweeter.”
It was a terrible joke, but Ljuba actually smiled, a real one, if only for a second. Vera looked at me like she wanted to staple my mouth shut, but I could see the edges of her own grin trying to betray her.
“We could throw a fake funeral,” Ljuba said, picking up my bit. “Invite all the worst people from high school. Make it a party.”
Vera shook her head. “You two are insane.”
“And you love it,” I said, tipping my wine glass toward her.
We made it through the rest of the movie without incident.
When the credits rolled, Vera got up to pack away the leftovers, even the stuff we’d never eat.
I could see her hands shaking a little, and that scared me more than anything.
She was our rock. If even she could crumble, then what chance did I have?
An image of Vera bruised and bleeding flashed through my mind.
Our adoptive mother hated us, thinking we were trying to steal her husband’s attention.
Which like... first of, how could we steal something she never had?
Pretty sure he only married her to make himself look normal.
Second, no thank you. She could keep the creep.
But that day, the bitch had realized that Vera had skipped her period, so she did her worst to cause a miscarriage.
So, yeah, Vera had plenty of her own ghosts that would make her hands tremble, but she always looked so strong. Guess she’d been pretending so she’d be able to take care of us.
I picked at the paint on my thumbnail, working it loose. We all took care of each other in our own way. This time, I was the one who could take care of Ljuba, even if it wasn't in the same way as Vera would.
Maybe Nick had a point about writing everything down instead of talking about it. However I went about it, I had to do it. I had to give him everything I knew so Ljuba and others like her would never get hurt by those people.