Page 198 of Ruthless Sin
The compound gone to that deep-hour quiet I have walked through alone for three years.
Tonight it is different. She is beside me.
I stop her at the door of our suite.
She turns. The two lockets at her throat. The peach dress in the dark hallway. I am done managing the distance between us.
I cup her jaw in my hand.
Her breath goes shallow. She doesn’t pull back. She tips her chin up and her eyes are steady on mine and my chest is so full it aches.
“I love you.”
She kisses me. Her hand in my shirt, pulling me through the door. She closes it behind us. She does not lock it.
The compound sleeps around us. The painting space off the bedroom waits in the dark the way it always waits. Yelena’s canvas turned to face the room now. No longer hidden.
I don’t go in there alone anymore. I go in with her.
The river runs downstream. We sleep.
40
MILA
András is on my chest.
He was born during the night. He is hours old. His hand is around my index finger and the grip is small and reflexive, the grip of a body that doesn’t know yet where it is, only that it is here, only that it is held.
He is going to forget this grip. I am never going to stop feeling it.
I am the godmother.
Oksana is asleep in the bed behind me. The cotton blanket across her lap has three sets of initials embroidered at the corner. Oksana’s. The baby’s. Yelena’s. I asked them to add Yelena’s. Nobody asked why.
Oksana named him András, after her grandfather. She didn’t ask. She didn’t have to. The wedding ring is back on the chain at her throat, recovered from Alexei’s effects. She fell asleep with her hand on it.
I hum. Quiet. Tonkaya Ryabina. The slow lullaby on the low register. The version my grandmother sang to my mother, who sang it to my sister, who sang it to me, and I taught it to Sofia.
He does not wake. His breath stays steady. I hum.
Sofia in the doorway. She comes in soft. She has been at Casa Lucia every morning for a week. Her hair is brushed. Her cheeks have color. She crosses to the foot of the bed. Looks at the baby. Opens her mouth.
She hums. Two bars. Pitched. In tune. The second voice of the song.
My throat pulls tight. This is what the song was always for. I didn’t know until now.
We hum to him. We do not speak. Sofia and I in a room with a newborn baby and a sleeping mother and the song extending forward for the first time in our lifetimes.
Nico is in the doorway. He has been there for the duration of the hum. He does not come in. He waits.
When I stand and Sofia takes my place at the bedside, I lay the baby in Sofia’s arms. Sofia does not flinch. I watch her settle the baby against her chest and my throat closes. She is already his. She is already mine.
I kiss the baby’s forehead. I kiss Sofia’s temple. I walk out.
Nico does not speak in the corridor. Neither do I. We walk to the SUV.
He drives us across the city. The route his hands know. I look at the line of his jaw. The watch on his right wrist. The cufflinks. The mark I left at the side of his collarbone weeks ago is still faintly visible. He glances at me once at the gate.
