Chapter 17 - Iosif
We walk in through the doors, and Janella gravitates powerlessly toward the food.
Sunday brunch is just the hangover cure the doctor ordered.
Or, at least, the doctor would’ve ordered if she weren’t busy with the overzealous brunch menu. Weekly brunch had been Yulia’s idea—a can’t-miss Yuri production for the whole family, no matter how busy, to touch base.
I look over my family. Trifon is making train sounds and feeding his baby girl, Zinaida, some mush, while she flings it all over the place.
Both of them are wearing matching grins—albeit hers is a gummier one.
Miron and Nadya are squabbling so loudly that Darya keeps shushing them, nursing black coffee in her pristine teacup.
Valentin has Gela pinned against the credenza, his lips at her ear, and her smacking at his chest, laughing, and trying not to spill the juice she’s trying to pour.
Janella slots right in.
It’s me who gets the run-of-the-mill wave.
With no preamble, she embraces whoever she comes across. One minute she’s here, helping Yulia with place settings. Next, she’s dropping a kiss against Leonid’s cheek and fist-bumping Miron.
My chest constricts as I watch her crouch beside the baby. It comes naturally to her to make funny faces to entertain Zinaida. The kid is thrilled, gurgling and reaching for her with those chubby hands.
In the time I’d stupidly spent avoiding her, shoving my siblings at her to bridge the gap so she wouldn’t notice, she’s gotten close to them. It’s clear on sight.
“She likes you better than me,” Trifon grouses, looking peeved. “I supplied the DNA, and she’s ready to trade me for you.”
Janella giggles, and the sweet, unguarded sound is cute enough to piss me off. “That DNA just includes good taste,” she says shyly.
Zinaida clutches at the end of Janella’s braid, eagerly cooing, and I can’t watch.
“That, they do,” Trifon agrees, turning to steal a piece of bacon off his wife’s plate.
I’m frozen in place when he catches my eye across the room. My stomach flips when he nods, tacking on what is unquestionable approval.
Trifon. The big, bad head of the Yuri bratva, who countless men are ready to shit their pants in front of. Even he isn’t immune to Janella.
She’s slotted in like a missing puzzle piece. Not as loud or brash as the rest of us, but innately capable of holding her own. Weathered to resilience—and somehow no less a kind soul for it.
Her words from last night still ring in my ear—What’re you going to do with all your free time now that I can save myself?
Every argument I’d bound her to me withers away a little more with each passing day.
I don’t fucking know.
What will any of us do? What use does she have of us, now that she can take care of herself? Now that she doesn’t need me, as per her own admission.
“Who took a shit in your coffee, bratan?” Leonid croons in my ear, slinging an arm around my shoulder and shoving a fucking mimosa into my hand. “You’re brooding.”
“Am not.”
I’m not getting away with that elementary response, and I goddamn know it.
“Are too,” Leo counters, eyeing the view I’m facing like he can just figure the truth out that way.
He probably can.
“Trouble in paradise?” he guesses.
“What’re the chances of you dropping this if I ask nicely?”
“The same as if you ask like a dick,” he answers, imperturbable. He drags me over to the table, shoving me into the seat beside him. You couldn’t tell he fucked up his ankle none too long ago. But that’s my brother. “Might as well tell me. Or she probably will.”
His gaze returns to Janella across the table. Amusement glimmers in his eyes.
I give him a look that could peel paint. “I’m not in the fucking mood, Leonid.”
Before I look away from him, I can see the shock registering. There’s too much going on inside me for there to be any room left for guilt. I shove out of my chair and stomp over to the coffee.
Maybe I’ll make it an Irish one.
***
The car ride home is silent.
I’m not unaware of how the tables have turned.
Janella lasts longer than I would have. We’re already out of the elevator and down the hallway when she stops outside her bedroom door and stares after me. Her eyes burrow holes into my back.
She doesn’t let me go.
“Okay, nope,” she decides out loud. “We’re not doing this. What the hell is your problem? Are we seriously back to this?”
My shoulders lock, absorbing the impact of her words, striking my back like pebbles. Each one has my teeth grinding together until my jaw aches. I take another step away from her.
Let me go, I think. Don’t.
Her boots stomp up behind me. She’s half my size, but alive with wrath. She shoves her whole weight into me. And that’s it. Just like that. I feel the tether on my control snap. I turn and skewer her with a look.
“I’m goddamn talking to you, Iosif!” she exclaims. Her eyes—those infuriating, otherworldly eyes—flash with hurt.
“I don’t want to fucking talk to you,” I hiss back.
She flinches like I’ve struck her.
Fine. We can be fucking miserable together, in that case.
“You don’t mean that.” Her voice cracks, and still, she doesn’t relent. It infuriates me. She infuriates me. “Something happened. It must’ve. Why won’t you just talk to me about it? Why do you always just flip a switch and pull away from me?”
I snort bitterly. “Nothing fucking happened.”
“Yes, it did,” she argues. Her hands reach for me again. I cleanly sidestep before she can make contact. Her bottom lip wobbles. The hurt on her face leaves devastation in its wake.
A part of me wants to undo the last few hours. To stop, snatch back the words polluting the air between us. To apologize.
A larger part whispers darkly, Good. Get it over with. If she leaves now, it might not be so bad. At least then it’ll be your choice.
“I’m tired,” I say, so cold I’m almost numb.
Instinctively, she switches gears. “Then let’s have some tea, okay? I’ll make so—”
Cajoling me. Trying to fix this.
“I’m tired of this,” I clarify. “It was stupid of me to think I could pull you into my world and make it work. Just because my brothers did it doesn’t mean it’ll work for me.
I’m different. I’m not made for playing house.
This isn’t going to work out. You’re settling in and getting comfortable, when you said yourself you don’t need me anymore. ”
“I didn’t—”
“Janella, please.” I hold up a hand. I hate the way she recoils away from it.
Isn’t it proof? She still thinks I would fucking hurt her. That’s the kind of monster I am, in her eyes.
“You can keep working at the café. You’ve made friends there, too, right? The prenup will let you keep all the money in those accounts. You even have the skills to defend yourself now. What are you even getting from me besides a fancy address and a last name you never wanted in the first place?”
Her eyes have reddened. They shine with tears. She keeps shaking her head. Silly, beautiful woman.
Eternally handy with a knife, I twist it inside myself a little further.
“Don’t get me wrong, I respect the hell out of it. I’m proud that you’ve learned to be smart enough to know an opportunity when you see one. I know you see what I was saying in the beginning.”
“That was a long time ago,” she chokes out, on the precipice of a sob.
My heart is shriveling up in my chest.
“You don’t have to keep playing the devoted wife. You can figure out your next move, and we can just end this.”
“Stop it,” she shouts, shaking all over.
Here we are again, in this hallway. Her shaking and me out of my fucking mind. All that’s missing is her dripping blood down her arm.
My spine goes rigid, bracing for a blow.
Her voice drops to a whisper. “You’re a coward. I think you’re terrified because you care about me. You’re so used to living your life by the seat of your pants, because if you never plan, then you can never mess one up, can you?”
Her words slip like a blade between my ribs. Stab, stab, stab.
“But you do make plans around me. You’ve been making them since you met me.
And I think that scares the hell out of you.
You can’t just grow up and admit that, so you have to drive me away.
And run away. Maybe start avoiding me again, so I can get the message without you ever having to be the messenger. ”
“You don’t know me,” I say. Even to my ears, that’s weak.
“I think I know you better than anyone ever has,” she retorts, viciously swiping at her cheeks where tears have begun to stream down. “But maybe you don’t know that you’re starting to succeed. You keep pushing me away, and it’s working. So, congrats, I guess.”
She stumbles backward.
The sight of it—
Panic surges through me, grabbing me by the throat and wringing it. I gasp for a breath that won’t come. Fuck.
“Don’t go,” I manage, my eyes burning.
“What reason is there for me to say? You don’t want me to. You only do until you don’t, and then you toss me aside. I’m nothing to you. Maybe that’s the message I need to get.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I grab her shoulders and wrench her back to me.
“I’m fucking sorry,” bursts out of me, from the bottom of my lungs.
“You’re right. Fuck, I know you’re right.
I am fucking terrified. What the fuck do I do about it?
You’re probably the best friend I’ve ever had.
And you need me less every day. I need you more. ”
She’s still shaking.
Again, she shakes her head. “I don’t think sorry is enough anymore, Iosif. I’m tired of you doing this.”
There are still tears rolling down her cheeks. I don’t even have the right to wipe them away this time. I’ve done this to her.
“Then what would be?” I plead with her, sick to my stomach. She won’t even look at me. It isn’t like any of the other times before. “I’ll do anything. Tell me what would be enough. Ask me for anything.”
It’s she who looks terrified. She flinches when I try to reach for her again—but I suspect that it isn’t about me. Is it about Cillian Driscoll?
Hellfire can’t burn more furiously than my loathing for him.
I try to soften my voice for her, to be a balm when she doesn’t need to be burned again, ever. “I’m not your father. This isn’t a game. No games anymore. I mean it. Nell, I—”
She finally looks at me. There are tears in her eyes and trepidation in her stance. She’s still fucking brave. I’d been right—my little lion girl.
Somehow, she finds it within herself to study my face. It’s like she’s searching for something. I try to meet it head-on, to match her courage.
She lets out a full, quivering exhale. And with it, the words, “I want to visit my mother’s grave.”
I don’t know what I thought she’d asked for, but this hadn’t been anywhere near the lift. Maybe a private jet. But that isn’t her speed, is it? This is. Janella’s unexpected and heartfelt.
Fresh tears spill from her and gut me. “My dad never let me go. He called it a waste of time. I—I haven’t been since her funeral. She didn’t have anyone else. I want to take her flowers. I want to talk to my mom.”
Twelve years. That funeral was twelve fucking years ago.
“Let’s go,” I say, already nodding. “You don’t have to wait another second. I’m ready now, if you are.”
She looks so small. It has nothing to do with her height.
“Really?”
I fucking suck.
“I’ll have Otto bring the car around right now.”
***
The cemetery is only a 20-minute drive away.
Janella says nothing for any of them, and I can’t fucking blame her.
The late afternoon sun floods in through the windshield and paints her golden. Especially with the luscious bouquet of carnations and calla lilies in her lap, she looks like an angel, a heartbroken one.
Apology after apology forms and turns to dust at the tip of my tongue.
She wasn’t wrong. Sometimes, it isn’t enough.
To say it here, amidst the rows of headstones we walk past, would be insulting. I should just consider it enough that she lets me come along instead of ditching me in the car with Otto. It’s been so long that she has to search for her mother’s grave.
Eventually, we come across a modest stone beneath a maple tree:
Here lies
MAYA TAMAR DRISCOLL
Devoted mother & wife
1979-2013
Janella drops to her knees in front of it. Her breaths leave her in short, staccato bursts.
“Mama,” she sobs softly, her forehead pressing to the stone. “I miss you. I’m sorry it took me so long to come.”
I’ve never put much stock into talking to ghosts. There’s barely been any dead I’ve wanted to honor. Hardly any death I’ve encountered, to be honest, that I haven’t purposefully been the harbinger of.
Yet, standing behind her, listening to her sob, I find myself wishing for ghosts. I want her mother to hear—to see how much she has to be proud of with this person she made. This wonderful woman who’s tipped my universe on its axis without ever meaning to. By simply being who she is.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” Janella whimpers.
“I’m so, so sorry, Mama. I wanted to so badly.
I just didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to stop him from any of it.
From selling your café. I should’ve fought harder, and I didn’t know how.
I’m learning now. It’s too late, I know, but I’m trying so hard. For you. It’s all for you.”
I can’t stand it. I shut my burning eyes and drop beside her, pulling her to me. She doesn’t fight me. Thank fuck. I don’t know what I would’ve done if she wouldn’t let me hold her through this.
It breaks my heart into a thousand fucking shards when she buries her face in my chest and unravels.
More than a decade of grief bursts from her in wave after wave.
My hands don’t have to hold her together.
They get to. They get to cradle her to me, to rub circles into her back, and feel her breaths slow after.
Just like my stupid fucking mouth gets to press kiss after kiss to her face—her brow, her temple, her wet cheek.
I get to do this.
And no matter what she chooses one day, I want to do it.
I need to.
For as long as she lets me get away with it.