Page 7 of The Pakhan's Secret Babies
Nothing.
She is gone. The only evidence that anyone shared this room with me is the faint depression in the pillow beside mine.
I stand at the bathroom sink and look at my own reflection while the water runs hot and think about a woman who gave me a first name and nothing else, and then disappeared before the light changed.
Lena.
I turn the name over once. Then I step into the shower and put it away, because I am a man with a full day ahead of him and I have never had any patience for mornings spent in my own head.
I dress without rushing. Dark trousers, a blue shirt, no tie. I have a car in forty minutes and a schedule that doesn’t care what happened the night before. I sit on the edge of the bed to put my shoes on and notice, without meaning to, exactly how far the cold has spread across the sheets.
She has been gone a long time.
I put my shoes on and go downstairs.
The estate is already in full motion. The cleaning crew arrived at seven, and they move through the ballroom and the main reception rooms with quiet, heads-down efficiency.
I pass two men rolling up the temporary dance floor in long sections, working from opposite ends toward the middle without speaking.
In the ballroom itself, round tables are being broken down and stacked, the white linens pulled and folded with the mechanical speed of people paid by the hour. The floral arrangements, elaborate things that cost more than I remembered approving, are being disassembled and boxed by a woman who seems personally offended by the waste of it.
Out on the terrace, someone is moving along the railing, collecting champagne flutes two at a time, setting them into a plastic crate with small, precise clicks.
Three hundred people moved through this house last night. By noon, there will be no evidence of any of them.
I stand at the bottom of the staircase for a moment and watch it all happen, and then Kostya appears from the direction of the kitchen.
He is carrying two cups of coffee and a leather folder and wearing the expression I have learned over eleven years. This morning it sits at a moderate level of concern.
“You slept,” he says, handing me a cup.
“Don’t make it strange.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
He says nothing, which is confirmation enough. We take breakfast in the small dining room off the main hall, away from the activity.
Someone from the kitchen has left a spread on the sideboard, eggs and bread and fruit, and I take a plate and sit and go through my phone while Kostya settles across from me with his coffee and his folder and the patience of a man who has learned that I will engage when I am ready and not a moment before.
My phone has seventeen unread messages. Twelve of them are things I can deal with in the car. Three are things Kostya already knows about and has prepared materials for. Two are from council members I have no interest in speaking to before I have finished my breakfast.
What my phone does not have is a morning summary from Elena.
She sends it every day without exception. Confirmed appointments, flagged correspondence, anything in my schedulethat has shifted overnight. It arrives between eight and eight fifteen.
It is eight forty-nine.
I look at the blank space in my inbox for a moment, then I call her.
It rings twice. Two full rings, which is one more than usual.
“Mr. Petrov.” Her voice is even. Composed. There’s something underneath it that is so faint I would not catch it if I were not already paying attention. A slight breathlessness, like she has just stopped moving very quickly.
“It’s nearly nine,” I say.
A short pause. “I know. I apologize, I was going to send the summary before?—”
