“Not the weirdest thing that ever happened in the linen closet, probably,” Niko said dryly.
“What’s going on? Who’s peeing in weird places? Did I miss the party?” Ilya padded into the living room in a pair of faded plaid boxers and nothing else. Saggy boxers, at that.
Niko grimaced. “Dude. Cover that shit up. Nobody needs to see your balls hanging out this early in the morning.”
Theresa snorted laughter behind her hand. She covered her eyes with the other. “Agreed. Get a robe or something!”
Ilya turned, wiggling his ass at the pair of them, much the way he’d done when they were younger. “What? This? What’s wrong with this? You got a problem?”
“Gross,” Theresa said matter-of-factly.
For a moment, it was so much the way it had been during that brief year and a half when they’d all been a family that nostalgia washed over Niko in a rush, almost making him dizzy. If he closed his eyes, he could be sixteen again, just learning how to shave and figure out girls. Before everything had started to change.
A rap on the front door got him to his feet, though it was already opening before he could get to it. More nostalgia when he saw who it was—Allie letting herself in the way she always had when they were kids, running back and forth between their two houses. She’d lived in this house for a time, he reminded himself, watching her.
When she’d been married to his brother.
The house phone rang, distracting him before he could do more than wave a greeting. Yesterday it felt like he and Allie had made a peace of sorts, and he was glad of that. They weren’t kids anymore, and it was stupid of them to hold on to any sort of old grudges. Plus, he felt terrible that she believed he’d ever thought she couldn’t measure up to her sister.
“Oh. Okay, thanks.” Ilya said into the receiver and settled the phone back into its cradle. He didn’t move after that but put one hand on the wall, near the pad of paper with the pencil attached to it by a long piece of string—probably the same pencil that had been there for years. The end of it was bitten, teeth marks clear in the yellow wood.
Alicia had looked like she was ready to say something to Niko, but at the sound of Ilya’s voice, she turned toward him instead. “Bad news? It’s Babulya? Has she taken a turn for the worse?”
Ilya faced them, expression calm. Nothing much on his face at all, as a matter of fact. He barely even blinked when Galina came in through the back door from the yard.
“She’s dead.”
CHAPTER TEN
Then
Theresa heard her father’s voice rising, rising, and he slammed the phone back into the cradle with enough force to send the pencil beneath it swinging hard against the wall. Turning, he caught sight of her standing in the hallway. It was her father there, for sure, but in that moment he wore a stranger’s face.
“What?” Galina came in from the back door, the faint waft of smoke still clinging to her. “Barry, what’s going on?”
He shook his head and jerked his chin toward Theresa, who only wanted to get a drink from the kitchen sink. “Not now.”
She would never figure out what he thought he could do by keeping the news from her, but it didn’t matter because Ilya burst in through the front door, screaming for his mother. Babulya shouted at him not to yell. Barry, who’d always butted heads with Galina’s oldest son, also tried shouting at him, but Ilya ignored them both, stumbling across the kitchen floor toward his grandmother. He nearly knocked her over with the force of his sudden embrace.
“Slow down, slow down,” Babulya said, trying to get him to make sense, but in the babble of words, all Theresa could make out was a name.
Jenni.
Jennilynn had been missing for the past two days. Nobody said it, but Theresa thought most everyone believed she’d run off with one of those older guys she’d been hanging around with. It was what Theresa thought, anyway.
“Go to your room, Theresa,” her father commanded.
Barry tried to wrestle Ilya off his grandmother, who was trying to calm him, but Ilya fought them both. It was a huge, loud tangle of arms and legs and shouting. Theresa couldn’t move, frozen in place, her stomach churning. Something had gone very, very wrong. All she could do was watch as Ilya hauled off and took a swing at her dad, who stepped out of the way without the punch landing. Galina moved in next, grabbing at his shirt, but Ilya wrenched himself from her grip.
Gentle hands and a murmured voice led Theresa away. Babulya sat her in the living room and patted her shoulder, leaning down to look into her face to reassure her that everything was going to be all right. From the kitchen came the sound of breaking glass. Then silence.
“They found Jennilynn.” Babulya’s fingers squeezed Theresa’s shoulder.
Theresa found her voice. “Where is she?”
“She was in quarry.” Babulya’s eyes were bright with tears. She frowned and shook her head, closing her eyes for a moment before looking again at Theresa. “She is gone.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Alicia balanced a pan of ravioli and a tuna-noodle casserole against her chest while she tried to open her front door. Food, so much food. Ilya’s kitchen table had groaned with it, and his fridge had been packed to overflowing, the freezer in the garage stuffed full. That’s what people did when you lost someone: they brought food. Babulya had been well loved in the community.
The service had been nice. Alicia had spent a few hours across the street, but too many people had turned to her to act as hostess for a house that was no longer hers. On the day they buried a woman who’d treated her like family, Alicia did not want to be irritated by anyone treating her like she was still Ilya’s wife, but there it was. That niggling, burning annoyance at the number of people who’d asked her where to find the paper plates or plasticware. Or the trash bags when they were being helpful by emptying the garbage can, and she ought to have been grateful for their kindness.
The fact she still knew where to find everything had annoyed her, too. Hell, she’d found an old bottle of her hand lotion in the bottom drawer of the upstairs bathroom. Still half-full. She’d tossed that in the garbage and spent the next fifteen minutes trying hard not to burst into tears.
It wasn’t that she wished she and Ilya were still together. It wasn’t that she wished they’d never been married, either. It was that there was someone missing here today to mourn the old lady’s passing.