She falls quiet, and I still don’t know if she trusts my intentions, but regardless, she doesn’t try to leave me again.
“What are we supposed to do until you figure everything out?”
“For now, we’ll stay here,” I tell her. “Tomorrow, we will try to make things as normal as we can for Josh. We’ll grab some more clothes, food, whatever we need. And when I hear back from Alexei, we will start planning, okay?”
She tilts her head up to meet my gaze, and for the first time all day, she looks like some of her strength is returning. “I’m putting my trust in you, Lev. Please don’t let us down.”
4
Kat
The following morning, I watch Josh as he digs into the pancakes Lev brought him from the McDonald’s down the road. He eats them with a voracious appetite, and I remember we didn’t really have more than that snack at Lev’s cousin’s house last night.
“McDonald’s is a treat for him,” I tell Lev who is watching him with that same expression of awe and pride. And right now, a little wincing as Josh maneuvers a sticky piece of pancake dripping with syrup into his mouth, not quite getting it to its destination directly as it drops onto the open palm of the hand he’s holding beneath his plastic fork.
“Wow,” Lev says.
I have to chuckle as he takes in Josh licking the syrup off his palm.
“Is it driving you nuts?” I ask him, appreciating this moment of levity. Of almost normal. “I mean, you’re kind of a neat freak.”
He turns to me. “A little, but he’s cute. And I’m not a neat freak. I just like things organized and in their place.”
“Well, welcome to fatherhood.”
Fatherhood.
We both stop at my comment and just look at each other.
Lev reaches out a hand and brushes my hair back from my forehead, touching the bruise there.
“I wouldn’t change anything when it comes to him and you. I mean the part with us. Our family.”
I shift my gaze to the cup of coffee in my hands, smiling because I feel the same way. But at the same time, I know there’s the other part. The Russian mafia part.
As if on cue, his phone rings. We both have the new ones his cousin Alexei arranged for us. I don’t know Alexei, and a part of me questions whether he can be trusted. If he doesn’t have a way of tracking those phones and telling Vasily of our location. But Lev trusts him and even as fucked up as his family is, I see that level of trust between him and Alexei. I saw it with Pasha, too.
I don’t trust most people. Nina was the one who knew the most about me, but even she didn’t know everything.
Joshua knew. Joshua lived it with me. But he died, and after his death, I learned to keep my secrets.
But I told Lev the other night. I told him more than I’ve ever told anyone, and it felt natural. It felt good to say some of those things out loud.
Secrets hold power over you, and in a way, when you speak them out loud and tell them to another human being, it gives you your power back. I didn’t realize that until the other night.
I look up at Lev. He’s distracted, expression serious as he talks into his phone in Russian. And when I go to him and hug him, he’s surprised. I know it in the break in his sentence. In that moment, he hesitates before wrapping his arm around me. I see it in the way he looks at me when I pull back.
“Mommy?” Josh is standing behind me hands palm-up. “I’m sticky.”
I watch Lev walk into the small attached living room part of our accommodation.
“Shocker,” I say, putting my coffee down and walking him into the bathroom to wash his hands. He still doesn’t quite reach the sink easily, so after rolling up his sleeves, I lift him and balance him on one leg as I wash his little hands.
“Can we go home now?” he asks.
When I look up from his hands, I find his eyes on me in the mirror, and inside them, I see the residue of the events of the past twenty-four hours.
“Not yet, sweetheart. We’re going to take a vacation with Lev first.” I don’t want to lie to him, but I need him to keep feeling secure and safe. At least as much as possible.
“But I want to go home.”
I switch off the water and busy myself with drying his hands, then crouch down to talk to him.
“You were scared yesterday, weren’t you?”
His eyes grow glassy with tears, and he nods.
“That man was a bad man, Josh, but he’s gone now, and he can’t hurt you anymore, okay?”
He touches my face, the spot on my forehead I thought I’d covered up so well with my hair.