And she knew. Angie knew that Semyon Zagorsky was also seeing a ghost from his long-ago past. Just as Milo Belkin had.
His eyes remained lasered on hers as she moved slowly around the table and took the seat facing him. Angie sat in silence, absorbing his face as bits of memories like tiny colored beads snapped and twitched along long-dormant neural pathways, forming bigger pictures, scents, sounds. The grove in the forest. The berry brambles full with ripe, juicy blackberries. The taste of them—a sweet-sour explosion in her mouth. The sound of a little girl’s laughter sending birds scattering in trees. A deer, watching them silently as they picked the berries and small yellow flowers. Glimpses of sparkling ocean through trees. The dark room with bars on a high window. A faceless woman with long dark wavy hair who smelled of grass and apples. Mother. The sound of her crying. Angie swallowed while her heart stuttered, then raced. Outwardly she struggled for cool, for composure, as she absorbed Zagorsky’s features.
His was a pugilistic face with the broken nose of a boxer and a fighter’s brow that protected eyes set in deep sockets. And those blue eyes from her past were still as bright and keen as in her memory, despite the passing of more than thirty years. Angie lowered her gaze to his hands. Another jolt of memory sparked through her—his hands holding the box out to her. The shape of his fingers was burned into her mind.
“Can you turn your left hand over?” she said with a voice that came out husky and didn’t seem her own.
He turned his hand. The blue crab was there, on the inside of his wrist. She raised her gaze back to his face.
“Roksana?” he whispered.
Tears seared into her eyes, the well of emotion so sharp and sudden it scared her. The feelings that roiled together inside her were a conflicted tangle of love, fear, confusion. The bitter taste of betrayal.
He reached his hand slightly forward across the blue table surface as if to touch her, to see if she were real in flesh, but his eyes ticked toward the mirrored glass of the observation room, and he drew it back.
“Do I look like her?” she said. Needing to know. Desperate. “Do I look like my . . . mother?” She could hardly say the word. Afraid it was all a dream, that she’d come this far, was getting this close, and now it would shatter like a delicate glass ball into mere shards of memory that could never be made whole again.
Moisture pooled in Zagorsky’s eyes. He nodded. “Yes,” he whispered. “Like Anastazja.”
Angie began to shake. “Her name?”
He nodded.
She swiped an errant tear from her eye. “What was her last name?”
He shook his head, staring at her as if still unbelieving. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “She never said. I never asked.”
“What happened to her? What happened to Mila?”
His body twitched. His eyes darted again to the mirrored glass of the observation room. He was afraid. Tension twisted through her.
“Please, I need to know.”
He touched his fingertips to the left side of his lips, as though to mirror her scar.
“Did you put that there, Semyon? Did you give me that scar?”
He closed his eyes a moment, as if the memory caused him pain, remorse. He shook his head.
“Did Milo Belkin do it?”
His eyes flared open wide. Now she saw terror.
Shit. Mistake. Backtrack. Fast. Before he clams up. Before it hits him that he has a parole hearing in two days and anything he tells me could be used to charge him afresh.
“Is she alive—my mother?” Angie said quickly, steering the conversation back again, trying to keep her voice neutral but failing.
Subtly, slowly, he shook his head.
“And Mila?”
The moisture pooled in his eyes leaked down his cheeks. He did not bother to wipe it away.
“What happened to my sister, Semyon? Who hurt her? Was it you? Did you kill that little girl and throw her body into some river or ocean like a piece of garbage? Is that why her foot floated up in Tsawwassen the other day?”
“No.” He thumped his fist on the table, holding it there, his face turning thunderous, his jaw clenching tight, neck muscles like cording ropes. “No, I did not hurt her. I’d never have hurt her.” He ground the words out between his teeth.
“Who did it, then?” Angie leaned forward, heart palpitating.
He glowered at her, a thunderstorm of emotions rippling in the tension of his muscles under his skin. He was fighting himself not to talk. It was visible, visceral—he wanted to share as much as he did not.
Angie leaned farther over the table. “You know what happened to her, Semyon.” Her gaze pinned his, the edges of reality and time blurring around her. “You cared for us once, Semy. You were fond of me and Mila.” Surprise cut through Angie at her automatic use of his abbreviated name. Another bolt of recall hit her out of left field—a woman’s voice saying his name. Semy. The same voice that had sung the lullaby, the same voice that had screamed for her to get into the cradle and be quiet.
“She liked you, too, Semy. Didn’t she? My mother. Anastazja.”
His lips thinned, started to quiver.
“You regret what happened, don’t you? You regret it deeply.”
He lowered his head and turned his palms face up on the shiny blue table. He stared at his hands as if they did not belong to him, as if he was confused by what those hands might have done. A giant in a cage, a bear of a man. An odd spurt of sympathy went through Angie.
“Semy.” She touched his fingers. His gaze jerked up.
“Tell me who did it, who hurt them.”
Again, she could see that war inside him—a growing fear of criminal repercussion fighting with a desire to share the past with her. It was raw and tangible and powerful. A desperation rose in Angie—she was losing him. He’d said all he was going to say.
“Semy,” she said again, earnest, leaning in yet closer. “Are you the father of Roksana and Mila?”
His mouth twisted in some kind of agony.
“A DNA test will tell, Semy. Your profile is already in the system. It’ll be a simple—”
“I’m not your father, Roksana,” he whispered. “But I was more a father to you two than he was.”
Bam.
“Who was?”
He inhaled deeply and glanced at the windows behind which the officers watched. He turned to look at the door. He was seeking escape. From her, from her questions, from the past. From guilt, maybe. From himself.
“Did you love her? Did you love Anastazja?”
He made a move to get up.