EPILOGUE: ALYSSA
“You’re sure?”
Emily nods reassuringly. “I wouldn’t be releasing this baby unless she was a hundred percent ready to leave the hospital. She doesn’t need us anymore, Alyssa. She needs you.”
My bottom lip trembles as I reach for my little girl. At almost five months, Zena is still small. She’s about the same size Katya was at three months. But she’s a good little feeder and her lungs are a force to be reckoned with.
She slides into the crook of my arm and I breathe in that baby milk smell that clings to her rosy cheeks. She opens her dark brown eyes, fixes them on me, and gurgles softly before breaking into a gummy, happy smile as though she knows we’re going home today.
“Are you ready, my little warrior?” I ask, looking down at her. “Are you ready to get out of here? Start some adventures with your sister?” She gurgles again and I kiss her head. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Uri steps to my side with Katya in his arms. She’s got a chubby hand clinging to his shirt like she’s scared someone will try and rip her from him.
“Look who it is, Katya!” I exclaim quietly. “Your twin sister.”
Katya babbles excitedly.
I glance towards Emily. “Thank you so much. You can’t know how grateful we both are for everything you did for the girls. And for me, too.”
She waves away my gratitude. “Please. It was my job.”
“It was Grigory’s job, too, and he betrayed us,” Uri growls with an anger rippling in his undertone that I don’t think will ever go away.
Emily’s face sours the moment Grigory’s name is mentioned. “He was a sorry excuse for a doctor,” she says in a flat monotone. “Lucky for us, he’s no longer here.”
I still haven’t asked Uri what happened to Grigory. I figured he disappeared the same way Boris Sobakin did—and honestly? I didn’t care. After what each of those monsters tried to do to my girls, they deserved their ends. The details of how they left this earth aren’t important to me.
“Go on now,” Emily encourages. “Take her home. And don’t stress out about every little thing. Babies are resilient. They’re made to survive new parents. You can do this, Alyssa.”
I smile nervously as Uri steers me towards the door. I know deep down that I can do this. It’s just that sometimes, reality is a lot more no-holds-barred than the picture you create in your head. Fantasies of becoming a mother are always sunlit and breezy and smell nice. The truth of motherhood is… a little bit less polished.
When we first brought Katya home, I spent every waking moment with her. I refused both a nanny and a night nurse in favor of doing it all myself. I suppose it was my guilt kicking in. I couldn’t be with one of my babies, so I compensated by being with the other one all the time.
Turned out, it wasn’t the healthiest plan. After a month of nonstop work, Uri had to sit down with me and force me to take a break.
“You can’t do this all by yourself, Alyssa. More importantly, you don’t need to.”
“I don’t want to rely on nannies—”
“I’m not talking about nannies; I’m talking about family. Polina is happy to babysit. So is Nikolai. Dimiv’s bringing his wife and kids over in a few weeks and I’m sure Dagmara will be overjoyed to pitch in as well. I can’t be the only one you allow to take her when you’re not around.”
I still didn’t listen. A week later, I fell asleep holding Katya and she slipped out of my hands. She’d been wrapped in a thick, fleece blanket, so there wasn’t so much as a single bruise on her perfect head. But she let me know I’d messed up. She wailed all the way to the car, all the way to the hospital, all the way from the parking lot to the building. Of course, she stopped crying literally seconds before we stepped into Emily’s exam room. I could almost swear she winked at me, that little sneak.
But it was the wake-up call I needed. After that, I got better at relinquishing control to other people. It turned out to be the best decision I could have made for both of us. Polly was madly in love with her new niece. Nikolai doted on her like every day is Christmas.
The most surprising reaction of all, though, was Lev’s.
It was amazing how mellow he became around Katya. At first, he was wary, but once he breached that initial hesitation, he seemed more fascinated than anything else. He could sit and watch her for hours.
Of all the connections Katya had made with her family, that was the one that made me the most emotional.
And now, we’re about to do it all over again.
Uri drives us home while I sit in the backseat between both babies snuggled up in their car seats. I look back and forth, back and forth, over and over again like something terrible will happen if I go more than a second or two without making sure each of them is exactly where they were last. That old, familiar fear is back in my throat, tasting like blood.
It’s only when we pull up in front of the mansion that I finally look out through the front windshield for the first time since we left the hospital. When I do, I see a huge banner draped over the doorway.
WELCOME HOME, BABY ZENA!
Hand-painted flowers line the borders of the banner. I see Polina’s careful strokes and Lev’s bright splashes of color. If I’m not mistaken, the spiky one in the corner that looks almost reluctantly drawn is the work of none other than Nikolai Bugrov, that fake stoic cupcake of a man.
And all three of them are clustered on the front stoop, watching anxiously as we emerge from the car. As soon as I’m on my feet, Pol leads the charge over. She plucks Katya from Uri’s arms without even bothering to ask for permission. Lev and Nikolai follow, though Niko keeps a careful hand on Lev’s shoulder to make sure he doesn’t stray too far.
“What do you think, Lev?” I ask softly. Zena fell asleep on the drive over here with one palm pressed to her cheek. “This is your other niece, Zena.”
He claps his hands over his mouth. “She’s so little.”
I nod. “Yes—but she’s strong.”
“She’s going to be okay?” When I nod again, he smiles and glances back down at her. “Can I touch her?”
“Go for it.”
He trails a finger over her forehead gingerly. Then over her one exposed cheek. She stirs just a bit, her lips opening and closing like a little goldfish.
We herd our way into the living room, one big, shuffling mass of Bugrovs. I guide Lev to a seat in the armchair and help situate Zena in his arms. He doesn’t move a muscle, barely daring to breathe as he just gazes down at her like she’s the most perfect thing in the world.
He might be onto something there.
As I watch, Uri comes up behind me, his arms looping around my waist as his lips press to the back of my head. It’s then that I finally take a breath and enjoy the whole scene.