Anna sat in an armchair in the sparse living area that was crammed with worn furniture and lit by a single overhead bulb. Vlad came back into the room from the tiny kitchen carrying two mugs of steaming coffee.
Despite the surroundings, Anna felt a sense of ease and relaxation that she hadn’t known for too long. It had been nearly three years since Anna had last seen her father. Time hadn’t been kind to him; he looked fifteen years older. The picture in her head was of a man in his prime. Handsome, full of strength and life. Now he looked... damaged. Weak and old. He was still handsome, but his eyes were darker and tense, his forehead was creased, his hair was scruffy, and he had thick stubble with messy splashes of grey.
How much of the look was real and how much of it was a persona he’d adopted for his job, Anna couldn’t be sure. She hoped it was the latter. The thought that her father, the person she’d looked up to most in the world, had fallen so far in such a short time was hard to take.
Vlad set the cups down on a wobbly coffee table, and Anna got to her feet. She flung herself at her father, taking him by surprise as she wrapped her arms around him then sunk her head into his chest. He reciprocated, hugging his daughter tightly.
The feel of him, his distinctive smell that Anna wouldn’t even know where to start describing, fired so many pleasant memories in her mind. Anna had grown at least two inches in the years she’d been at Winter’s Retreat but she still fitted snuggly into her father’s chest. She would have stayed in the warm embrace for much longer, but Vlad took his arms away, stepped back, and gazed down at his daughter.
‘You look... beautiful.’
Anna felt her cheeks blush.
‘I can’t believe it’s really you. You’re so grown up.’ He reached out and brushed a lock of hair away from her face.
‘It’s really me.’ Anna smiled.
Vlad reached out toward Anna’s neck. She didn’t flinch. He gently took hold of the locket that was dangling there.
‘You still have it,’ he said, glowing.
‘Of course.’
She took the locket from his hand and looked down as she opened it up to reveal two pictures, tiny head shots. One was of Vlad as a young man in his twenties, the other of Anna as a nine-year-old girl. Vlad stared at the pictures then turned and with a pained face sat in an armchair. Anna closed the locket and took a seat in the chair opposite.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Vlad said. ‘I’ve not been well. But I’m getting better.’
An injury or illness? Anna wondered. She decided against asking.
‘How long have you been here?’ Anna asked, unable to hide her dissatisfaction as she looked around the decaying room.
‘Just a couple of months.’
Anna’s eyes moved from her father over to the mess on a set of drawers in the corner of the room. An ashtray, overflowing with cigarette butts, was surrounded by at least a dozen bottles of spirits, most of them empty or not far from it.
‘It’s not me, Anna,’ Vlad said. ‘This isn’t me.’
Anna said nothing for a few moments. ‘Then why are you here? Why is it like this?’
‘It’s hard to talk about it.’
‘A job?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘You’re hiding?’
‘Hiding. Running. Surviving.’
Anna humphed at his words. ‘So what is that?’ she asked, looking over at the empty bottles again.
‘It’s who I need to be right now.’
‘You sure about that?’
‘Yes. I’m still the same man I always was. The same man you knew.’
‘But I never did know the real you, did I,’ Anna said, her words tinged with bitterness.
‘Of course you did, Anna. You knew the man I wanted to be. The man I had to be for you.’
‘I’m not sure that’s the same thing.’
Anna leaned forward and picked up her coffee from the table. She pulled the mug toward her face. The vapour from the liquid caught her nose. It smelled stale and bitter. She took a sip. It tasted even worse.
‘Hard to find good coffee around here,’ Vlad said, smiling – in embarrassment, Anna sensed.
‘Hard to get good anything around here, I’m guessing.’
‘The Tuica isn’t too bad.’ Her father looked over at the spirit bottles.
Anna didn’t respond to the quip. Her mind was too occupied with her next question. ‘Why did you leave me in that place?’
Her blunt words caught her father off guard and he stared at Anna for a good while before answering.
‘I had no choice,’ he said. ‘It was becoming too dangerous for you. For me too.’
‘You think that place was safe for a teenage girl.’
‘Safe? You’re still alive, aren’t you?’
Anna said nothing in response, and the same old question reverberated in her mind: Did he know?
It was the only question she wanted to ask. Yet she knew she never could. Because she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. ‘Were you ever coming back for me?’
‘Yes. I said I would.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘I said I’d come for you as soon as I could. As soon as it was safe. It never was.’
‘So you would leave me there forever? Never once wondering what had happened to me?’
‘I’m sorry,. It was the only way I could see. But don’t ever believe I didn’t think of you. I thought about you every day. You’re one of the few things that has kept me going.’
They both took a break from the increasingly awkward conversation. Anna tried again to drink her mug of coffee, hoping that, despite the taste, at least the warm liquid would soothe her. She took a small sip but it made her gag and she set the nearly full cup back down for good.
‘Is that milk off?’ Anna asked.
‘There isn’t any milk in it. Hard to get good fresh milk around here.’
‘Then why is it that colour?’
Her father shrugged. ‘Best not to think about it.’ The look on his face hardened. ‘How did you find me?’
‘It wasn’t that difficult.’
Vlad smiled again. ‘You’re a lot more like me than you realise.’
Anna agreed with that. Though she wasn’t sure it was a good thing. ‘There was a man in Winter’s Retreat. Alex Meskhi.’
Vlad pursed his lips and shook his head, his way of showing the name meant nothing to him.
‘He was a Vor.’ Anna saw the twinkle in her father’s eye.
‘Never trust a Vor, my dear Anna.’
‘That’s not far off what he said.’
‘He knew me? This Alex?’
‘No. Not really. But he gave me the name of someone he said could help me find you.’
‘Who?’ Vlad asked, eyebrow raised.
‘Levan Chichua.’
The look on her father’s face changed to one of anger.
‘Chichua,’ he said, practically spitting the name.
‘He’s looking for you too, apparently.’
‘He has been for years. Like I said, you shouldn’t trust the Vory. So Alex Meskhi was trying to set me up?’
‘Maybe. Or maybe he really did think Chichua could help find you.’
‘And did he?’
‘I’m here aren’t I?’
‘You are. And they’re not.’
‘That’s because they’re both dead,’ Anna said, calmly.