“Ilya.”
“Who? What about Ilya?” Jennilynn flipped the blanket back just far enough to reveal one mascara-smeared eye.
“He’s your boyfriend?”
“Why? Did he say he was?” Jennilynn sounded weirdly . . . hopeful. She pulled the blanket back over her face. “Was he talking about me?”
“I haven’t asked him. I asked you.” With an eye on the clock, Alicia ran a comb through her hair, still damp from the shower. She had just enough time to swipe on some mascara and lip gloss and grab a toaster tart on the way out the door to the bus. She hesitated, though, staring hard at her sister, at the mysteries she was concealing beneath the cover of the comforter. “If it’s not Ilya . . . who is it?”
The only answer was a soft snore that had to be fake. If she went over to her sister’s bed and yanked off the quilt, that would force Jennilynn to get up. She’d have to go to school instead of getting to lie around all day watching TV. Alicia wanted to force her sister to stop lying about where she’d been and what she was doing, and with whom, but though Alicia wanted to do this, she couldn’t quite make herself. Because then she’d know, she thought as she left their bedroom with a click of the door behind her. And if she knew exactly what her sister had been up to, she wouldn’t be able to keep pretending that nothing was wrong with her.
“Jenni’s sick,” she told her mother, who was already wearing her coat and putting the lid on her travel coffee mug.
“Again?” For a moment, her mother looked concerned, the crease between her eyes deepening in a way that Alicia realized made her mother look . . . old.
“It’s her period, I think.” The lie slipped out easily enough.
Her mother wrinkled her nose. “Does she need anything?”
“She’s sleeping,” Alicia said. “I gave her some aspirin for the cramps.”
“Thanks, honey.” Her mother gave an absentminded look upward, as though she could see through the floors and into her daughters’ bedroom. “I’m going to be late for work, and I don’t have time to take you if you miss the bus. You’d better run.”
Alicia grabbed a toaster tart and allowed her mother to hurry her out the back door. She walked down the long lane toward the bus stop, where she could already see the Stern brothers and their still-newish stepsister waiting. Just once, she paused to look up to the window of her bedroom, but not even a shadow hinted at the sight of Jennilynn looking back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It felt good to be fixing something, to have a concrete task he could put his mind to and complete. Niko had always liked working with his hands for that reason. It took his mind off everything else that was going on.
Everything except Alicia, anyway, and since she was the main thing taking up all the room in his brain lately, he’d set out this morning to plan a day of tasks that would fill his time so he wouldn’t have to . . . what? Decide? Choose? And what had he done but go to see her—like that would help him forget the sound of her soft moans when he’d touched her.
“Yuck,” Niko muttered as he pressed the perpetually damp spot on the wall surrounding the tub. He poked a little harder, making a hole.
“It’s bad.” Galina said from the bathroom doorway. “But you can fix it?”
Niko shrugged, turning. “I’m not sure. I mean, yeah. I think so. I should be able to. The plumbing part of it, sure. The wall, I dunno. It’s going to depend on what kind of mess we’re looking at behind it. This might be a bigger job.”
Galina pursed her lips, studying the damage. “You can do it.”
“Nice that you have such faith in me, Mom,” Nikolai said with a grin.
“You’ll come through for me, Kolya.” His mother went to the sink and opened the medicine cabinet, then closed it with a creak. She smiled at him in her reflection. “This next. I’d like a nice mirror in here. Maybe a pedestal sink instead of this useless thing. New, fresh paint. We’ll get rid of the wallpaper.”
Niko brushed the crumbles of plaster dust off his hands. “Sure. We can do all that. Why not pull up the linoleum while we’re at it? See if there’s a real wood floor under here?”
“Ooh!” Galina clapped her hands and grinned at him. “Yes. That would be great. You can do that, too?”
He could, but that wasn’t so much the point he’d been trying to make. “Look, I know you want to get this place in better shape, and it certainly needs a bunch of work done to it, but . . . where are you getting the money for it?”
Money had always been a sensitive topic with her. He knew she’d often asked Ilya for loans she’d never paid back, or flat out asked his brother to cover her expenses. Ilya had bitched about it, but he’d done it. Galina had never come to Niko for money. She’d always relied on him for other things. Sometimes, he wished he’d been able to simply write her a check, instead.
“Don’t you worry about that. It’s my problem.” Galina shrugged. “And it’s not so much, is it? When you’re doing the work for me? If I had to pay someone, it would be much more.”
It would not have been the first time his mother had come up with some grand plan or scheme that she’d been unable to see all the way through. Not even the first time she’d put herself in debt chasing some crazy idea. One of the reasons Niko had gone so far from home, stayed away so long, was to distance himself from this very thing. The mania and the inevitable crash that came after.
“It’s a lot, that’s all. This house, it’s a big project.”
Galina laughed and shook her head. “It’s my house. My responsibility. Is it so wrong for me to want to make it nice for you boys? It’s all I have to give you, really.”
Niko frowned. “I don’t need you to give me anything.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to. I’m your mother, and I know I haven’t been the best one.” She studied him. “Besides, the more you have to do here, the longer you can stay.”
“If I can. I have some things coming up I won’t be able to get out of.”
That was a lie. He’d already started talking to the council about cashing out his contract. He wanted to stay here, and not so he could fix up his childhood home for his mother. He wanted to stay because the thought of leaving and not seeing Alicia again had woken him more than once in the night, his mouth dry and tasting sour, his heart pounding painfully. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do about that. He was still running, but not sure in which direction.
He did not want his mother to know this. Her decision not to go back to South Carolina wasn’t trustworthy. Unless maybe she knew he wasn’t leaving, but he absolutely didn’t want to be the reason Galina stayed.
She tilted her head to look him over. “Surely you can find work around here that won’t take you away.”