35. Ruslan
Ruslan
The flight back to California feels twice as long as the flight to Colorado. Perhaps because I spent the entire trip wondering how to explain something that should never have needed explaining in the first place.
By the time I unlock the front door to the house in Santa Barbara, Kate is already running toward me.
“Uncle Rus!”
She launches herself into my arms with enough force to nearly knock me backward. I catch her automatically, laughing despite the exhaustion dragging at every muscle in my body.
“Easy.”
“You were gone forever.”
“I know, I’m sorry.”
She buries her face against my shoulder.
“I missed you this time. And I was worried. Stepan was in such a bad mood.” I file that away, make a note to talk to my second-in-command and be sure he understands that Kate should never see a hint of my life outside of business. “You always come home, though.”
Her words lodge somewhere painfully beneath my ribs. I hold her a little tighter before setting her back on the floor.
“Always. What was for dinner, kozlenochek? Are there leftovers?”
Kate grins at the silly nickname, little goat, and takes my hand to drag me into the kitchen, talking about chicken wraps that I’m not the least bit interested in.
* * *
This morning is considerably harder, especially after only five restless hours of sleep. Kate had knocked out hard after chatting herself into exhaustion, but I stayed up, frustrated and worried. Annoyed by how strange it felt being away from Emma after over a month together.
Now Kate sits cross-legged on one of the barstools at the kitchen island, happily drowning a stack of pancakes in maple syrup while the sun pours through the windows overlooking the garden. Her blond hair is still damp from the shower, and she hums softly to herself between bites.
I sip my coffee. It’s all I can stomach this morning. Another sip—anything to delay the inevitable.
Kate notices, though, and narrows her eyes.
“You’ve been staring at your mug for like five minutes.”
“I have not.”
“You have.” She points her fork at me. “You’re doing your thinking face.”
“I have a thinking face?”
“You do. It’s all—” She scrunches up her face, making me huff a laugh and almost choke on a mouthful of coffee.
“Wonderful.”
“The eyebrow thing.” She demonstrates by furrowing her own brows dramatically. “And the tapping.”
I immediately stop tapping my fingers against the mug. Kate grins.
“Knew it.”
I should have known better than to think I could hide anything from a twelve-year-old who’s spent six years studying my every habit. She’s sharp, which shouldn’t surprise me. I can see her being a psychologist someday, or a criminal investigator. I’m not sure which I’d prefer.
She cuts another piece of pancake before looking up again.
“You didn’t break up with Emma, did you?”
The question catches me completely off guard.
“What?”
“You look sad.”
“I—no. I didn’t break up with Emma. She’s just back in Colorado for a little longer.”
She chews, brows furrowed, and asks around her food: “You’re going back then, right? Maybe I can come with you this time?”
The thought of Kate and her father being in the same state is so infuriating that I need to look away. I can’t let her see that side of me.
I’m only now realizing how much of an effect the last month has had on me—seeing him again, being angry again, violent again. How stupid it is when I have so much here.
But if it weren’t for this mess with Andrei, I wouldn’t have Emma. She would’ve disappeared all those weeks ago to wherever she ran away to next.
I look out the kitchen windows toward the ocean. The conversation I’ve rehearsed a hundred different ways suddenly refuses to cooperate.
“No.”
I set the mug down and draw a slow breath.
“There’s something you deserve to know.”
Kate’s smile fades. The kitchen suddenly feels quieter despite the dishwasher running and Almay, one of the maids, doing laundry a few rooms down.
Kate sets her fork aside. “What is it?”
I rest my forearms on the island, hating how worried and scared she sounds.
“You already know I’m your real uncle.”
She nods. “I know.”
“You also know that your father wasn’t part of your life.”
Another nod. This one slower.
“I’ve always thought he was dead,” she admits quietly. “Is that…?”
The words sting, the very thought that all this time she’s been grieving or questioning or unsure. I swallow.
“No. He’s alive.”
Silence, except for the loud ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room. Kate searches my face, then asks quietly: “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know him?”
“I do.”
Her breathing changes. Just slightly. I pray with everything in me that it isn’t hope I’m seeing in the way she perks up, her eyes unblinking, the pancakes forgotten.
“What about my mom?”
I force myself to meet her eyes. “She’s alive too.”
“I don’t understand.”
I had hoped she wouldn’t ask that immediately. Unfortunately, she’s always been bright.
“Your mother loved you.” I choose each word carefully. “She wanted to keep you.”
Kate’s eyes widen.
“Then...” Her voice trails off. “Why was I in foster care?”
The question tears straight through me. Because there is no answer that a child should ever have to hear.
I lean back slightly. “Your father made that decision. He had influence.” I hate the word even as I say it.
“He made sure you entered the foster system. He didn’t want your mom to have you.”
Kate stares down at her untouched pancakes. For several long moments she doesn’t move.
“I remember,” she says quietly after a moment.
I blink, not understanding. “Remember what?”
She can’t mean Shannon. She was barely more than a newborn when everything happened. She spent mere months with Andrei, or more likely his assistants, before going into the system.
“You remember what, exactly?”
Kate shrugs almost absentmindedly. “I remember more than people think. Not about my mom and dad, just about moving a lot.” She traces circles through the syrup with her fork. “I remember one house where the lady locked the pantry because she didn’t want us to take extra snacks.”
I feel sick. She’s never told me any of this before.
“If we asked for food outside meal times, we’d get in trouble. There was another place too where I had to sleep on a couch, even though they told the social care lady that they had a bedroom for me.” She smiles faintly. “I kept pretending it was camping because that made it less scary.”
I close my eyes briefly.
God.
She was six. Six when I found her. How many other memories does she have buried under her skin? What else does she keep locked up, to herself?
Kate looks back up at me. “I don’t know what I was waiting for, but I remember thinking somebody was supposed to come.”
I can barely breathe.
“You did.”
A small smile appears, and she spears a bite of pancake, offering it to me. When I shake my head, throat too thick with emotion to respond verbally, she chews thoughtfully.
“I don’t remember a lot from before you found me; I just mostly remember after. Like getting my own room. And how you kept buying me stuffed animals because you didn’t know what little girls liked.”
“I was trying,” I choke out, voice rough and half-amused.
“I know.” She gives me a tight, tired smile, too tired for a twelve-year-old to have. “I’m glad you found me, Uncle Rus.”
The simplicity of the sentence nearly undoes me. Not because of what she says, but because I know how close I came to never finding her at all.
The sunlight that had felt so warm a few minutes ago now seems strangely fragile, as though the morning itself is holding its breath. After a long silence, she asks the question I’d been expecting.
“So where’s my mom then? Do you think she’d want to see me?”
I look down at the lukewarm mug of coffee in my hands before answering.
“I’m not sure. I found her once when I was looking for you. But she’s moved. She’s still in Utah, I’m pretty sure.”
Kate’s nose scrunches up. “Utah?”
We share a look, both of us unsure of what’s so appealing about the state. “Utah,” I confirm.
The memory returns with uncomfortable clarity: a run-down mobile home park outside Salt Lake City, faded aluminum siding, weeds growing through cracked pavement, and a woman who never opened the door because she’d disappeared again before I arrived.
“She wasn’t there anymore the last time I checked. But she’s okay, I think.”
It feels like a lie because I have no idea if Shannon is okay. Kate listens without interrupting.
“I eventually found someone who knew where she drifted from time to time. She didn’t have a permanent address, so I rented a post office box, and I send a little money there.”
“You send her money?”
“Every month.”
She looks surprised. “Does she ever write back?”
“No,” I shake my head gently. “But someone collects it.” I don’t say out loud, I hope it’s her. I’ve never thought too hard about this situation, about what it might mean if the “contact” is just taking the money for themselves. About how well Shannon has been hiding all these years.
Kate lowers her gaze to the table. “Why did you look for her?”
The answer is simple: “Because she loved you.” I pause, choosing my words carefully. “She made mistakes. So did I. So does everyone.”
I think of my mother.
Of grief.
Of impossible decisions.
“But abandoning you wasn’t one of hers. If she could’ve kept you, Kate, she would have. I want you to know that.”
Kate nods slowly, letting the information settle. She gets up, scrapes the rest of the pancakes into the trash, and puts her dishes in the sink. For a few minutes there’s normalcy again. I can almost pretend this is any other weekend morning.
Then she asks the question I’ve dreaded even more.
“My dad, though. You know him?”
I close my eyes briefly. This is the part that changes everything.
“He...”
The word catches. I have spent years hating this man. Years imagining what I would say if Kate ever asked. I never thought I’d be the one initiating this conversation.
“He’s successful.”
She waits. She’s good at waiting me out, I think humorously, her silence prompting me to continue.
“He lives in Colorado. He’s a politician.”
Kate’s eyebrows lift.
“A politician?”
“Yes.”
“Like... on TV?”
“Sometimes.”
Her expression shifts from curiosity to confusion. “So...” She studies my face. “Why didn’t he want me?”
Blyat’. I don’t want to be explaining this to a child, even if she is almost a teenager.
“I don’t know. Not really.” It’s dodging the truth, but not entirely a lie. “I know what he did, but I don’t know why.”
“Is he in Colorado?” Kate asks quietly.
I nod, words sticking in my throat for the moment.
“You went there for a wedding.”
Another nod. I see it click in her head, see her put the pieces together.
“So maybe now he wants a baby. If he’s starting a family.”
The statement is so logical, so simple, and devoid of anger or blame, that it almost takes me out.
Kate stares thoughtfully at the tabletop. Finally, she asks, “Does his wife know? About me?”
“I’m not sure, Kate. I only got to meet her briefly. I think she thought he was a good person. I’m not sure if he’ll tell her the truth.”
Somewhere outside, gulls cry over the ocean, following the baitfish in with the tide. Kate finally reaches for her glass of orange juice before speaking again.
“If everybody thinks he’s such a good person...” She looks directly at me. “...then somebody should tell them.”
I blink. “What?”
“If he really did that.” She gestures vaguely between us. “To me. And to Mom. People should know, right?”
“Kate...”
“I mean it.” She smiles sadly. “I’m okay. But you should tell everyone if you can, so they know what kind of person he is.”
She isn’t okay. She survived, and there’s a difference. It’s crazy how resilient kids are, or at least how resilient she is. If I’d been half as resilient as my niece, would this bitterness have burned out of me long ago? Would I have just changed the channel when Andrei showed up on that TV?
Still, I understand what she’s trying to give me. Permission. I reach across the island and squeeze her hand.
“Thank you.”
She smiles more brightly this time. Then, with the startling ability children have to pivot between life-altering conversations and complete normalcy, she asks, “So...”
I narrow my eyes suspiciously.
“So?”
“Emma.”
Of course.
“What about Emma?”
Kate grins. “Was she pretty at the wedding?”
I sigh. “Very subtle.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“You saw the dress we picked for her. What do you think?”
“I think she’s gorgeous. And I think it’s weird you left her in Colorado.”
I smile despite myself. “I wish I could’ve brought her, but she’s safer there for now.”
Kate’s eyes cut to me sharply at the word “safer,” and I realize I slipped. Trying to recover, I say quickly, “The wedding was beautiful, but somehow I spent more time looking at Emma than anything else.”
Kate beams triumphantly.
“I knew it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You absolutely do.”
I rub a hand across my face.
“She looked...”
The words refuse to come easily. How does one explain sunlight caught in chestnut curls? The quiet confidence she’d slowly grown into?
The way she looked standing beside me as though she’d always belonged there, the way she feels?
“She was gorgeous.” The admission feels strangely inadequate. Kate’s smile softens.
“You love her.” She says it like a simple fact, like two plus two is four. Kids see love as so uncomplicated, even after everything I just told her.
I don’t answer. I don’t need to.
Because somewhere between Colorado and California, between revenge and forgiveness, my life quietly stopped revolving around Andrei. Now it revolves around a twelve-year-old girl finishing cold pancakes.
A woman carrying our child and hopefully napping in my father’s cabin.
The tiny life neither of us expected, but that I already find myself planning for.
The future remains uncertain. Emma could still decide she doesn’t choose me, doesn’t choose this baby. She might choose the baby and leave.
If that’s what she needs, I will accept it.
But a part of me quietly hopes, as I watch Kate get up and get ready for a day of gossiping on the phone and watching TV, that there’s still time for me to make a home. To have a future, and not just a past.