They cut him out of her after she died. I wish I hadn’t read that.
My mother is a scientist. She’s a genius. She’s strong and she’s fierce and, okay, she can be a little obtuse about ordinary life, plus she doesn’t understand art at all, but still, she’s Mom. She has more to give the world than almost anyone else I can imagine.
Tsar Alexander thought all she had to offer were heirs to the throne, so he . . . bred her to death.
I pick up a silver photo frame from my bedside table. The oval portrait there, in slightly fuzzy black and white, shows my mother with younger versions of me, Vladimir, and Katya; she’s dressed in an elaborate long-sleeved gown, but the way her arms are curved protectively around me and Vladimir, the way she smiles down at the toddler Katya in her lap—something in her, too, remained the same in this universe.
But not enough. Here, my mother never had the chance to study science. What interested her here? How did she occupy her brilliant, restless mind? Did she ever look at Tsar Alexander with anything like the love and trust she always had with my dad?
And here, Josie was never even born. Dad must have been a fleeting presence in her life, which is almost impossible for me to imagine.
With a shaky hand I put the photograph back where it belongs; even the thought of what happened to my mother is too much to bear right now. I slump back on the piled feather pillows and take slow, deep breaths.
My eyes go to the sliver of light visible beneath my bedroom door. Until a few minutes ago, that light was broken by two dark lines—the shadows of Paul’s feet as he stood guard outside. But apparently even the personal guard of one of the grand duchesses is allowed to sleep. The encyclopedia informed me that I live in St. Petersburg, currently in the Winter Palace.
What about Theo? If he exists in this dimension, he probably would be in the United States, or maybe in the Netherlands, where his grandparents were from. My heart sinks as I realize that, in a world where the swiftest travel possible is by train, there’s no way Theo could reach me today, or tomorrow, or even within a few weeks. Given the famous savagery of the Russian winters, it’s entirely possible he couldn’t get here before spring. Even if he did manage to travel to St. Petersburg, how would he ever win an audience with one of the grand duchesses?
It’s all right, I tell myself. You’ll find Colonel Azarenko tomorrow. Anyway, Paul’s here. You don’t need anyone else.
My mind fills with thoughts of Paul. How could I have completely failed to understand him?
“In other words,” I said, “you’re trying to prove the existence of fate.”
The scene is as vivid for me now as it was on that day: Theo in a faux-weathered RC Cola T-shirt. Paul in one of the heather-gray Ts that I knew he only wore because he had no idea how much they showed off his muscles. Me tucking my hair behind my ears, trying to look and feel as grown up as they were. All of us together in the great room, surrounded by Mom’s houseplants and the summer warmth from the open doors to our deck.
I was joking when I spoke about fate, but Paul nodded slowly, like I’d said something intelligent. “Yes. That’s it exactly.”
Although I knew Theo thought the idea was silly, it intrigued me. Anytime the physics discussions around me shifted from complicated equations to concepts I could connect with, I seized on it. So I sat beside Paul at the rainbow table and said, “How does this work, then? Fate.”
He ducked his head, shy with me even after spending more than a year practically living in my house. But like any scientist, he was so fascinated by ideas that he couldn’t stay quiet about them for long. He steepled his large hands together, fingertip to fingertip, holding them in front of me, as our illustration of a mirror image. “Patterns reoccur, in dimension after dimension. Those patterns reflect certain resonances—”
“And people each have their own resonance, right?” I thought I’d picked up on that much.
He smiled, encouraged. Paul’s smiles were rare—almost out of place on someone so large and brutish and serious. “That’s right. So it looks as though the same groups of people find each other, over and over. Not invariably, but far more than mere chance would suggest.”
Theo, who was across the room settling back into his own math, made a face. “Listen, little brother, if you write your theory up like that, and you stick the numbers, you’re golden. It’s when you get into this souls-and-destiny crap that you sink your thesis. Seriously, you’re going to get up before the committee and defend that?”