“Good question. I have no idea.” She stepped back, out of his reach. “You certainly aren’t giving me any reason to.”
He waited until she’d left the kitchen before he went to the counter where he’d left his glass of whiskey and tossed it back. Anything to get rid of the scent of her. She was his . . . well, she’d been his sister. Sort of.
A long time ago.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Alicia was never going to untangle herself. She was stuck, wrapped up, trapped in the Stern-family web. The question was, which of the Stern brothers was the spider, and how long was the venom going to take to kill her?
She could’ve made an excuse about not going over there tonight. She no longer cared much what Galina thought or said, and she was used to dealing with Ilya. It was Nikolai causing the twisting in her stomach. Seeing him, not seeing him, pretending they hadn’t kissed in her kitchen, hoping he would look at her. Wondering what she’d do if he did not. She could have stayed home, but then she wouldn’t know, would she, whether he was going to look at her, and what he might see if he did.
She’d had to Google what shiva meant and how to observe it. Wikipedia had said to bring food, so here she was on the front porch of the Sterns’ house with an angel-food cake and a pan of brownies she’d baked herself, realizing too late that she could neither ring the bell nor open the door without dropping something. She was saved when Theresa opened the front door.
“Galina told me to wait for people to come, then open the door,” Theresa said as she stepped aside to let Alicia pass. “She said you’re not supposed to knock at a shiva house? I don’t know, exactly.”
Alicia gratefully handed the other woman the heavier plate and caught sight of the mirror that had always hung in the front entry. It had been covered with a familiar sheet, pale blue with patterned pink flowers. It was part of a set she and Ilya had received as a belated wedding gift from a distant relative she’d barely known. The gift had been a surprise, but seeing the sheet hanging over the mirror was another.
“Oh,” she said.
Theresa looked at the covered mirror. “Yeah. It’s tradition, I guess. Ilya did it.”
“Ilya . . . did that?” Once more, Alicia paused in surprise.
She’d always known the Sterns were Jewish, of course. In a town this small, that had been an anomaly. She and Ilya had been married in a Vegas wedding chapel in a nondenominational ceremony. They’d put up a Christmas tree every year because she’d made the effort, and he’d never argued against it. She would never have guessed he knew the first thing about religious observances.
Theresa looked uncomfortable for a second or so before she shrugged. “Yes. He’s . . . he’s taking this hard, I guess.”
“He was her favorite.” Alicia waited for Theresa to move ahead of her down the hallway and into the kitchen. “Where are they?”
“In the living room. He and Galina aren’t really talking to each other, but they’re both in there. He got drunk last night, and I guess they got into it a little bit.” Theresa gave Alicia a wry grin over her shoulder as she set the plate of brownies on the table among all the other platters and trays. She gestured at the oven. “I put in a few of the casseroles from after the service. So many came to the house after that, I don’t know how many people will be stopping by. Galina sent out a bunch of e-mails and texts, she said.”
It looked like Theresa had wasted no time in making herself useful, Alicia thought, then cringed at her own—what was it, exactly? Jealousy at how easily the other woman seemed to have slipped into the role of hostess? A place Alicia herself had disdained and wished she didn’t have to fill, right? Theresa was family, too, after all. The other woman gave Alicia a lingering, contemplative look, but if she sensed Alicia’s stupid flare of emotion, she didn’t say anything about it.
“Niko’s upstairs,” Theresa said. “If you wanted to know.”
Alicia kept her focus carefully on the angel-food cake she was trying to find room for on the table, careful not to give away any hint of interest. “Oh?”
When the other woman didn’t answer right away, Alicia looked up. Theresa couldn’t possibly know. Could she?
Theresa said nothing after that, because a shuffle of feet and a murmur of voices came from the front hallway, and with a small shrug, she headed out of the kitchen to greet the new guests. Alicia let herself grip the back of one of the kitchen chairs for a moment, her eyes closed. Breathing in, then out.
Kissing Nikolai had been one of the dumber things she’d ever done, but it wasn’t like they had to act like the strangers she’d told him they seemed to be. They could keep their distance from each other if they both wanted to. They didn’t have to act stupid about it. They were adults. She didn’t need any kind of reassurances from him about what had happened, she told herself as she slipped out of the kitchen before anyone could come in that she’d have to talk to. She didn’t need him to make her feel better.
She crept up the narrow back stairs, each step only about half the width of a normal one. As kids they’d made a game of running up and down this back staircase without falling, at least until Babulya had gotten tired of the thunderous noise and the multitude of bumps and tumbles. She’d locked both the bottom and the top doors to keep them out, and the stairway itself had become more like a storage closet than anything else. She inched her way past ski boots, mop handles missing their heads, stacks of magazines. At the top she paused, certain she’d find the door locked and her attempts at stealth all for naught, but the door creaked open on cantankerous hinges, and she stepped out into the house’s upper hallway.
She drew in a long, slow breath. Funny how it felt to be here on whisper-toed feet, sneaking. She put an unsteady hand on the plaster wall, feeling the roughness. Refusing to give in to the desire to close her eyes and lose herself in memories—she was here right now. In this moment. In this place.
Making this choice.