He doesn’t know that there is no price I wouldn’t pay for answers.
“Did he believe who you were?” I ask.
“He didn’t care.”
Alexei parks, and we start toward the doors. The steps are cold and hard—just like the building. Just like the sky. I don’t even know that this place needs walls. Anyone who lives here probably gave up the will to fight ages ago.
“Gracie?”
It’s only when Alexei speaks that I realize how long I’ve been standing on the threshold. Alexei’s holding the door open, but I haven’t moved a muscle.
“I can go alone,” he tells me. He knows.
“No.” I shake my head. My hands tremble. Then my hands are caught by Alexei. He holds them tight, sandwiching them between both of his, warming my fingers, then bringing them to his lips.
“I have you,” he says.
He should be the one who is shaking. I should be telling him that he doesn’t have to do this. I shouldn’t make him go. Through these doors waits the mother he hasn’t seen in ages. I can’t quite blame him for not wanting to face her. Some things are better left as secrets. Some people are better off as ghosts.
But I smile up and step inside, wait for the slamming of the door, the ominous click.
“Alexei?” I ask.
“Yes?”
“What did they tell you? When your mother went away.”
Alexei puts his hand at my back, urges me forward. “They told me men don’t cry.”
I stop and spin on him. “You were just a kid.”
Blue eyes find mine. “I am Russian.”
When Alexei starts down the hall, I’m by his side. There is no sense in arguing, in telling him that it’s okay to cry. It’s not okay sometimes—I know that. After all, one time I cried so hard and for so long that I ended up in a place like this.
I’m trying not to think about that when a man appears in the doorway in front of us, a smirk across his face.
He wears a gray suit and has a very thin mustache and looks like the villain in an Agatha Christie novel. I half expect him to swing a greatcoat around his shoulders and try to kill us both with a sword he keeps hidden in an umbrella.
I ease closer to Alexei.
“I was told that we had guests,” the man says. I don’t know how he knows that we speak English, and I don’t ask.
Or care.
“We are here to see Karina Volkov,” Alexei says. He doesn’t say my mother.
The man with the mustache looks like he finds this amusing. “I am Viktor Krupin. Welcome to Binevale. I am the director of this facility. It is not often that people drive willingly through our gates.”
“We would not have come were it not important. My mother is Karina Volkov. I need to see her. Please.”
“Oh, I’m afraid we have no patients by that name.” He eyes us skeptically. “And we have no patients who receive guests.”
“I’m her son,” Alexei says. It feels like this admission costs him, like it’s something he’s spent years hiding, even from himself.
Viktor shakes his head. “You will not find your mother here.”
When I look up at Alexei, I can see the truth of those words reflected in his eyes.
Alexei’s mother isn’t here. She is a dream of his that has been dead for a very long time. But the Karina who lives here has answers. It’s that Karina I’m desperate to see.
“This woman.” Alexei takes out a phone and shows Viktor the picture Megan took. It’s cropped, and even through the fence the woman’s face is clear.
“We need to see her,” Alexei says.
But Viktor shakes his head. He lets his gaze slide onto me.
“That is impossible.”
I don’t miss a beat. I just ask, “How much?”
“Excuse me?” Viktor almost succeeds in acting confused.
“How much to speak to the woman in that picture?”
“There is no amount of money that would make such a thing possible.” He sounds smug and indignant, but it’s an act. I can tell.
Alexei must think so, too, because he rattles off a string of Russian that I can’t hope to understand.
Viktor’s gaze narrows. He practically glares. “Nyet.”
Alexei is just opening his mouth to reply when I step forward. “Who is she?” I ask.
Viktor seems confused by the question. “Excuse me?”
“If that woman isn’t Karina Volkov, then who is she?”
There’s a glimmer in Viktor’s eye, as if one of us has finally stumbled upon the right question.
I watch him weigh it, considering. I have no idea what he wants to say, because at just that moment, a woman’s voice asks, “Viktor?” Her accent is thick.
“If you will excuse me,” Viktor says, then turns and goes to her. They whisper low and close. I look at Alexei, but even he can’t understand what’s going on.
I don’t recognize the look on Viktor’s face as he turns back to us. “It seems I was mistaken. If you will come this way …”
I can imagine Megan sitting behind a laptop somewhere, easing her way into whatever ancient system keeps this place running, telling them to let us in.
Alexei must be imagining it, too, because he whispers, “Megan?”