Page 147 of Beautiful Obsessions
“I lay in Marushka’s house for months,” I continued.“On my stomach.Unable to move.Unable to feel my legs properly.Unable to do anything but breathe as my hatred towards our father grew.”
Archie’s stare locked on mine.
“The doctors came at night.Men who owed Bass.Men who owed me.They cut into my back and pulled out fragments where they could.They left what they had to.Infection nearly took me twice.”
His face tightened.I kept going because he had asked for everything.
“And when death didn’t take me, my own body tried to finish the job.”
I looked down briefly at my legs.
“They told me I might never walk again.”
The room went quieter.
Outside the window, wind pressed against the glass.
Inside, my brother stood with his hands clenched and his grief bleeding into something neither of us knew how to hold.
“For a long time,” I said, “I believed them.”
His eyes glistened, but no tear fell.Popovich men were raised to bleed before we cried.Our father had made sure of it.
“I fell more than I walked.Marushka used to beat my legs with towels when they wouldn’t answer me.”
His brow twitched.
“She said if I planned to die, I should stop wasting her soup.”
For half a second, something almost like memory crossed his face.
Mama Marushka, five feet of fury, terrifying enough to scold corpses back to life.
It vanished quickly.
I continued.
“I learned to sit up.Then to stand.Then to take one step without collapsing.Then two.Then across the room.Then down the hallway.Every inch was war.Every day I pictured you.”
His eyes lifted.
“You were the only reason I stood again.”
His anger faltered.I hated that too.I didn’t want forgiveness because I had suffered.
Pain was not currency.It did not buy absolution.But he needed the truth, and the truth was that every movement had been made toward him.
“I went to Italy,” I said.
Archie stilled.
“What?”
“I went to bring you home.”
His expression changed again.
“When?”
