He put down his bottle of beer and wiped his mouth with the napkin. He gave her a curious, wary look. “Yeah?”
The sound of the front door opening turned both of them toward it. It could only be one person, of course. Nobody else would simply come inside her house without knocking first.
“Hey,” Ilya said, then stopped at the sight of his brother. “Wow. What’s the occasion?”
“It’s just dinner,” Nikolai said evenly. “What’s up, man?”
Ilya held up the packet of papers and looked at Alicia. “Maybe I should be asking you that. Both of you.”
“We’re eating dinner,” Alicia said tightly. “And we can talk about that stuff in your hand tomorrow, at work.”
“I want to talk about it now.” Ilya slapped the papers onto the table and grabbed at one of the takeout cartons. “Great, I’m starving.”
Alicia leaned to snag the carton from him and set it out of his reach. Ilya raised both brows. His smile did not reach his eyes.
“What, am I interrupting something? Is this like . . . a date or something?” He looked from his brother and back to her. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on,” Nikolai said. “I was out getting some stuff at the hardware store. Figured I’d pick up some takeout. I brought it over to Alicia’s house because I know she likes Indian food. That’s all. You don’t need to get bent about it.”
“No, I guess not,” Ilya answered with a short bark of a laugh. “I mean, except that she’s my wife. And you’re my brother.”
“I’m your ex-wife, Ilya.”
He turned to her. “And he’s still my brother.”
“You didn’t seem to think that sort of thing was a very big deal,” Alicia bit out, “when you started fucking me after you’d been fucking my sister.”
Ilya’s fists clenched, resting on the table. Nikolai started to speak, but Ilya’s glance shut him up. Ilya fixed her with an unwavering, impassive look. She took a long pull on the beer to wash the taste of bitterness off her tongue, but she didn’t look away from Ilya’s gaze.
Ilya stood. “The difference is at least your sister was dead before I took up with you.”
“Ilya!” Nikolai stood, too. “Don’t, man.”
Alicia flinched at his words and closed her eyes for a second before looking at him again. “Because of you. Right? Isn’t that what you think? Isn’t that why you came after me at all? To replace her?”
“You,” Ilya said with a sneer, “could never replace her.”
Nikolai moved around the table to take his brother by the arm—firmly, but gently. “C’mon, man. You want me to walk you—”
“I’m not fucking feeble.” Ilya yanked himself out of his brother’s grip and focused on Alicia. His sneer became a sly, nasty smile. “Did he tell you he’s not going back?”
“Not going back?” Alicia looked at Nikolai, confused. He frowned and ran a hand through his hair with a sigh. She looked back at Ilya. “I thought you said you were only on a short leave, that they expected you to go back? That you had to—you had a contract.”
“He dissolved it.” Ilya thumped the packet of papers. “Got a bunch of money, got bought out. He doesn’t have to go back to Israel. He can stay here, right here in good old Quarrytown, for as long as he wants to. He didn’t tell you that, did he?”
Stunned, uncertain of what to say, she looked at Nikolai. His expression was confirmation enough. Blinking, Alicia stood slowly. Now the three of them faced off, over the remains of takeout food going cold.
“I thought you were going to leave,” she said after a few seconds of silence.
Nikolai sighed again. “I was. But I changed my mind.”
“Were you going to tell me?” She put her hands flat on the table to steady herself, as if she might fall over at any moment.
“Yes. Of course.” Nikolai backed off from his brother but didn’t take a step toward her. “Tonight, actually.”
Ilya snorted derisively. “Aw, how cute. See, Allie. He brought you dinner to soften the blow.”
“It’s not a blow,” she said after a moment. “It’s just unexpected. It just changes things, that’s all.”
Ilya said something else, but Alicia in that moment couldn’t have cared less what he had to say about anything. All she could do was look at Nikolai. He looked back.
“Oh, shit,” Ilya said. “So it’s like that?”
Without looking away from Nikolai, Alicia said, “Yes. It’s like that.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Then
Niko didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he couldn’t wait to see her. Through all the cold, dark nights of Antarctica and all the long, hot days working in the apiary fields of Beit Devorah, he had not missed Quarrytown or, for the most part, the United States. He certainly hadn’t missed Galina, whose letters still found their way to him, but which he’d refused to answer. He thought of his brother now and then, but the only person consistently on Niko’s mind was Allie.
He didn’t regret leaving. He’d seen a chance and taken it, and it had led him to bigger and more exciting things. Leaving had saved his life, but it didn’t mean he didn’t wish he’d done it a little bit differently.
It was almost a year since he’d been home, and he hadn’t noticed until now that he’d grown another couple of inches. His chin and cheeks bristled with scruff if he didn’t shave every day. His arms and legs bulged with the muscles he earned fixing broken pipes and dealing with heavy equipment, as well as from all the work he’d done for the past few months back on Beit Devorah, where he went to stay after leaving the science station. He noticed now because he’d been on a plane for something like sixteen hours and on a bus for another five. His clothes were rumpled, his hair, a mess. He wasn’t sure whether he smelled bad or whether he’d become immune to his odor, but a shower would definitely not have been a bad idea.
That wasn’t the way the universe worked, though. When the cab dropped him off in front of his house, the first thing Niko noticed was the construction along the street. Then, the flowers in front of the house in window boxes that had been empty for as long as he could remember. He held back, uncertain. He knew Galina had moved away; her last letter to him was postmarked South Carolina and had taken months to reach him. And it was possible Ilya’d gone, too; maybe he found his own place. But surely Babulya would still be there, and his grandmother had never been a fan of planting flowers.
This wasn’t his home any longer—hadn’t been for a long time—and that was his choice. He’d made himself a stranger to it, so it felt only right that he knocked on the front door instead of simply letting himself inside. He wasn’t expecting to see Allie’s face on the other side of it when it opened, and clearly by her startled expression she was not expecting him. Then his arms were full of her, the familiar scent of her hair tickling his nose, and she was laughing but also crying a little.