Vera placed two cups of coffee on the wooden table between us, watching me with big eyes, before she disappeared from the room like hellhounds were on her heels.
I stared at her retreat. “Is there a reason she’s terrified of me?”
He waved a hand. “She is superstitious.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You are Tatianna’s spitting image. We did not know she had a child. Well, we knew, but we thought you passed away shortly after birth. Problem with the lungs, your papa told us.”
I always knew my mother had died young, but the only reason I knew her name was because the one time Papa ever got drunk, he told me I looked too much like his Tatianna. I often wondered if that was why, as I became older, he spent less and less time with me.
“My lungs are fine.”
“I can see that,” the man said with a chuckle and sipped his coffee. “What brings you to our neck of the woods?”
“I’m on a mission . . . of sorts.”
He hummed with disapproval. “Have you not heard the phrase, ‘Curiosity killed the cat?’ You are just like your mother. Some things are better left in the dark.”
I’d never heard so much about my mother in my entire life than I had in the last few minutes. Finally, I was getting some answers. And, apparently, more questions.
“Why would my papa tell you I died?”
He frowned. “Is it not obvious?”
No, it wasn’t obvious. Nothing about this was.
I opened my mouth to ask more—
“Now, enough about that. I thought your papa might have sent you, but I can see now, he has not.” He set his coffee cup down. “You must go. It could not be a worse time for you to come here alone.”
Why did everyone think I needed a babysitter? “I’ll be fine. I know how to take care of myself.”
“No one knows how to take care of themselves against D’yavol.”
The Devil?
“Up you go, now.” He stood with a wince and rubbed his knee. “I like living too much to harbor you.”
“I can’t leave yet,” I insisted, getting to my feet. “I’m not sure why you think I’m here illegally, but I promise, I have my papers.” I knew Russia was a little medieval, but, God, did they really execute people for such a small offense as harboring a harmless girl?
“Pah. I’m not talking about the government, girl, but D’yavol.”
I stared at him, realizing I might be speaking to a crazy person.
“I’m agnostic,” I said dumbly.
He shook his head and murmured something unintelligible.
My gaze found Vera in the doorway staring at me like I was a piece of furniture that had just moved itself.
They were both crazy.
She dropped the apron she was wringing in her hands and disappeared again. To find her sharpest meat cleaver probably.
“Why is your wife terrified of me just because I look like my mother?”
He eyed me as if I was the strange one. “You do not just look like your mother.” Moving to the fireplace, he pulled down a white sheet that covered a portrait above it. “Girl, you could be her.”
The woman in the picture was frozen in time, leaning against a grand piano. She must have been painted decades ago, but she could be me standing here today. The long blonde hair, the almond shape of her eyes, the tall and elegant form, and the alabaster skin that would never quite tan.
The similarity was so uncanny, goose bumps rose on my arms. She’d looked just like me, yet I didn’t know the simplest things about her. I stared at the portrait until the burn in my heart and the backs of my eyes faded.
“She was a sight, I’ll tell you that.” He rubbed his chin. “But beauty like that is a blessing and a curse . . .” His eyes settled on mine, something heavy and resigned filling them. “It always ends up in the wrong hands.”
A sense of foreboding trailed down my spine. My overactive imagination cast a scene through my head: me, kicking and screaming, while the devil carried me down to hell.
I swallowed the lump in my throat.
I found it odd they kept my mother’s painting on the wall but covered it with a sheet like the beginning of too many haunted house films. Though, maybe Vera just didn’t like to dust.
“When did she die?” I asked.
“Not long after you were born, if I remember right. She got sick and could not get better. This was her home. Your papa could not part with it, so Vera and I take good care of the place for him.”
“My father didn’t live with her?”
He pursed his lips, contrite. “No, girl, your papa was married.”
And there it was. The secret family.
Or, maybe I was the secret.
Was that why he told people I died? So he could live his comfy life here, without me getting in the way?
In the end, I knew that wasn’t true. Papa had been around for more holidays than he was away—until this past year at least.
But knowing he kept something like this from me, that I might have siblings and other family I’d never had a chance to meet . . . The pain hit me in the chest so hard I had to focus on something else, or I wouldn’t be able to breathe. I forced my gaze back to the portrait, noting the dress that had to be from the eighteenth century.
“Why is she dressed like that?”
His eyebrows rose. “You do not know? Your mother was an opera singer. A very . . . beloved one at that. People will remember her, and that is why you need to go home.” He grabbed my bag and ushered me to the door.
“I didn’t even get to drink my coffee,” I protested.
“You do not want the coffee; you want secrets I cannot tell you. Go home, wherever home is, and do not come back.”
“Do you know where I can find my papa?”
“Probably Siberia,” he muttered, opening the door and letting the frigid air in.
Siberia?
“Why would he be—?”
“I do not know of his whereabouts or his number these days, or I would have already alerted him of your presence.” He threw my bag onto the porch.
“Are you sure I can’t stay here?”
“I like my head where it is now, attached to my neck.”
I blinked. “Is that a no?”
He pushed me out into the cold.
“Wait,” I breathed, spinning around. “Can you at least call me a cab?”
He scowled. “I might as well phone D’yavol to pick you up.”
I stared at him, thinking I should probably refrain from drinking the water here.
He shook his head. “Go home, Mila.”
Once again, the door slammed shut in my face.
schlimazel
(n.) a person who suffers from bad luck
As the deadbolt locked into place, I wondered what happened to good ol’ Russian hospitality. They hadn’t even offered me anything to eat. Practically blasphemous, I’d learned from growing up in a Russian household, especially from a couple who seemed very in touch with their religious side.
With the weight of my papa’s secret sitting heavy on my heart and the obvious fact I wasn’t welcome here, a pathetic part of me wanted to listen and just go home. But if I returned now . . .
I’d dream.