“You think so? I don’t know, Nikolai. It feels like maybe we are.” She lifted her chin and closed her mouth tight to keep her lips from trembling. For what felt like the hundredth time today, she felt very, very close to tears.
Something shifted and cracked in his expression; she hated the sight of him agreeing with her, but what could she expect? That he would stride across the room and take her in his arms and kiss her breathless again? That she would take him upstairs to her bedroom and let him undress her?
Is that what she really wanted?
“No. Never strangers. Family,” Nikolai said after a moment. Then, in a lower voice: “I should get back over there. Ilya’s probably shitfaced by now. And Galina . . .”
“Your mother hasn’t changed.” Those words came more easily. Lighter. Alicia shook off the lingering heat and gave him a smile. “It’s good she’s here, though.”
It was Nikolai’s turn to answer with a nod. He headed for the back door, and Alicia noted with a mixture of amusement and dismay that he took the long way around, keeping the kitchen table between them so he didn’t come close to touching her. He paused in the doorway.
“Thanks. For everything. It means a lot,” he said.
Alicia gave him a grim, polite smile. “She was my grandma, too, you know.”
“Right, right.” Nikolai’s gaze slid away from hers, and he shut the door behind him.
When he’d gone, Alicia put her hand to her mouth, feeling the place where only minutes ago his lips had pressed hers. Then the tears came, burning and hateful and repulsive, knowing that she should cry over this when she’d been unable to weep for the true loss. Still, she shook with them until she was exhausted, spent, her eyes swollen and throat raw. When her grief eased, she was able to go upstairs to sleep.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Then
This was not real. It couldn’t be. Just a few days ago, Jennilynn was yelling at Alicia about wearing her favorite sweater, the new one she’d gotten for Christmas, and now she was dead.
She would never come back.
Their parents were almost comatose with grief. Her father managed to get up and around, at least enough to make some arrangements, but her mother . . . she couldn’t even get out of bed. Alicia had looked in on her this morning. The room stank of sour breath and sweat and something darker underlying all that.
Her mother made it to the funeral. There was that. It would’ve been easier if she hadn’t. If Alicia could spend the rest of her life without ever again hearing sounds like the ones that had come from her mother’s throat, she would be grateful. The rasping, keening wails had made Alicia want to clap her hands over her ears. Her mother had embarrassed her with the full-on force of her unmitigated grief.
Alicia would never forget it or get over it. Never be able to look at her mother the same way, not after seeing her as a person who could shatter into such tiny shards. Alicia didn’t think she could ever forgive her mother for not being able to make all this disappear, the way she’d done with nightmares and scraped knees and fevers. For becoming so lost in her own sorrow that she couldn’t help anyone else with theirs.
There should’ve been a meal at the church catering hall, but neither of Alicia’s parents had arranged it. Babulya was hosting people across the street at the Sterns’. She was cooking, and everyone else was bringing potluck. Babulya sat with Alicia’s mother for a long, long time that morning and probably was the reason she was able to get out of the room at all—Alicia thought she wouldn’t be able to forgive her mother for that, either. That she could rally for the sake of the neighbor, but not her own child. The one who was still left.
Babulya hadn’t been able to convince Alicia’s mother to go across the street, though. Her father was there for an hour or so before he came home, hollow eyed but clean shaven, his tie still tight at his throat. He disappeared into the den, where he sat in front of the television, watching game shows with the volume turned down so low he couldn’t possibly hear them.
Nobody had cooked a meal in the Harrison house since the news came that Jennilynn’s body had been found on the rocks in the quarry, in the spot where they’d always done their swimming. The fridge was empty. Alicia was hungry.
She didn’t want to be wearing the black corduroy dress with the stupid white Peter Pan collar and cuffs, the narrow red-velvet tie at the throat. It was the only black dress she had. She wanted to slip into jeans and her Converses and a sweatshirt and dive into a bowl of corn chips and sour-cream dip and another of ice cream with hot fudge, or a greasy burger and fries. She wanted to eat herself into oblivion and then roll herself into a cocoon of blankets and sleep until all of this went away.
Instead, she wore that black dress to go across the street and fill a plate with homemade lasagna, a turkey sandwich on a deli roll, a handful of chips. People looked at her, but most murmured as she passed and didn’t actually stop to talk to her. Alicia was glad for that. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She wanted to stuff her face.
Too many people downstairs. She sought the refuge of the upper floor and found the attic, which was quiet and smelled faintly of burnt candles and old sweat socks. Her plate balanced in one hand, she gripped the rail with the other as she climbed the stairs. The last thing she needed was to fall down and break her neck.
Did she know she wouldn’t be alone? She hadn’t seen either Ilya or Nikolai downstairs with the adults, so it made sense that at least one of them would be up here.
“Hi,” she said.
Nikolai looked up from the comic book he was flipping through. He put it down. Swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Hey.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Alicia pointed at a snoring Ilya, curled up on the army cot beneath the eaves.
“Drunk.”
“Shit.” She eyed him. “You’d better put a bucket by his head, unless you want to clean up after him.”
She watched as Niko pulled the garbage can from beneath the small desk and settled it by his brother’s head. She made a place for herself on the folding chair, plate balanced on her lap, and stared at the food she’d piled on it. She’d been starving. Now she didn’t want it.
“I can’t eat this.” Her voice was hollow and distant. She sounded like someone pretending to be Alicia.
Nikolai took the plate from her and put it on the desk. “You don’t have to.”
They stared at each other for a few long minutes. Night was falling outside, an early dark that was more because of the storm clouds that had been hanging low and threatening all day rather than the hour. Alicia looked out the window. Maybe everything from now on would always seem too dark.
“How are your parents?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Shitty. What do you think?”
“We all are,” Nikolai said.