21. Katya

It’s funny how Dmitry was the center of gravity to both of our lives, and his dying set us both adrift. I wondered if Yuri cursed or thanked Dmitry for bringing him home and into our family, into the bratva? Life on the streets must have hardened him and made even the Bratva life seem enviable. But now, years later, as a man, how does he feel about it?

It’s no wonder he doesn’t care about happiness, or anything or anyone.

I know I need to visit Dmitry’s grave, and Yuri should too. So, I brought it up after breakfast.

“I’ll take you, but first, a surprise.”

He had a mischievous glint in his eyes at the word surprise, that I just didn’t trust.

“No surprises, what is it.”

“Come with me,” he said, walking out and up to the garage with his big black Suburban taking up at least two parking spaces.

“Just the two of us?” I ask a little too cutesy as I climb up into the passenger seat. Grim silence is all I get in return as we drive further and further from downtown. After about twenty minutes, we stopped at a small house, part gray stone, part brown shingles, built in the middle of a large square tree-covered plat at the edge of a lake called Long Pond. The driveway was crushed white stone with an all-black Jeep Cherokee parked on it. There was no lawn, just underbrush and pine needles and a big garage and mother-in-law apartment built over it.

“What do you think of it so far?” He asked.

“What? Your new house?”

“Your new home. Your freedom, on the installment plan. And truck.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Surprised?”

“Floored,” I admitted. Never expected this to happen, especially not this fast.

“Come on, show me around,” he smiled, throwing house a key FOB with house keys on it to me.

“You haven’t seen it?” I asked.

“Nope, I wanted to see your reaction first.”

We walked through to a large country kitchen, big, with old, deep double-sink and old appliances, old linoleum flooring— everything was old, but still charming. The window over the sink showed a neighbor’s house, white clapboard.

Yuri stood over my shoulder and looked at the house, too, saying, “No neighbors, except in the summertime, the rest of the year it’s all yours so they tell me.”

That made sense. This place too was someone’s summer lake house getaway. Or at least it was a generation or so ago when mom could move with the kids to a lake house for a summer while Dad worked and came up on weekends. Now, if I had to guess, the kids who inherited it sold it to Yuri.

Still charming. I could work with this. Build my nest.

There was a stone fireplace in the living room and brilliant floor to ceiling French doors that opened on the lake. I could already smell the fire and the coffee and see the sunrise over the lake.

“All mine?”

“Yes,” Yuri demurred, drawing out the Yes.

I gave him a quizzical look.

“My men in the apartment over the garage to protect you. But they should be invisible,” Yuri said, turning towards me again. “Those are my terms, non-negotiable.”

I’d be a fool to be angry at that. “I’ll think of them as my mother-in-law, a nuisance but necessary.”

“Good. Now before you build your nest, follow me to Dmitry’s grave, you can visit him, and test drive the truck.”

We drove over to the cemetery and when I was the only one to get out, I was a little disappointed that Yuri was staying in his suburban, talking on the phone instead of accompanying me, but I couldn’t nag him into coming to the grave.

He had to do it on his own schedule and in any case, this was about me coming to terms with Dmitry for now.

I feel like I should be beating the ground with my fists, wailing loudly, uncontrollably. But I guess that’s the thing with grief, it doesn’t look the way it does on TV or the movies. And it never feels the way it’s supposed to. There is no to, it comes like this, and that’s how you know it-- jumbled up, confused, not the way it’s supposed to be at all.

I stare at the grave and take a deep breath, I almost hear Dmitry’s voice, his laugh, his smile, I lose all my nerve.

I hear Dmitry’s words. “Fear is a waste of time, Katya.”

I take a deep breath and repeat his words again. Fear is a waste of time.

I can do this.

Those words lift the weight off my chest.

I can breathe again.

“Dmitry,” I say, the words coming easier and easier. “I’m so, so sorry.”

The memory of our last conversation weighs heavily on my shoulders. I still can’t believe I was so cruel, so heartless.

I was young, I told myself. I couldn’t have known it would be the last words I had for him.

I hear this in Yuri’s voice, flat and confident as if I was silly forever thinking otherwise. I feel the weight being lifted off my shoulders, finally, after all these years of carrying this guilt around.

I start gushing to Dmitry, I tell him about Yuri, everything, the good and the bad. Saying the words makes me realize how I feel towards Yuri : several things but now, gratitude because he pushed me to do this, to unload myself of the guilt for Dmitry. This was only the start, but it felt so good, I wanted to thank Yuri, hug him, make him let me hug him until I was all hugged out.

I get to my feet and go to find Yuri.

I creep up to the SUV and hear him talking. I can’t make out the words except for my name, so I stalk quietly closer, careful he doesn’t see me and stop talking. I hear his angry, venomed tongue speaking in a raised voice but calmly and slowly, “That’s why she’s bait, cheese for the mousetrap. We’ll lure Petya and find out who the mole is in Viktor’s Bratva so we can start fresh once we take over.”

I freeze, a chill runs up my spine at the words. I’m the bait? The cheese for the mousetrap? I nearly start crying but hold it back, then start to creep away from his truck and his voice fades. He doesn’t see me.

I walk back to Dmitry’s grave in a daze. So happy and grateful one moment and devastated the next. I can’t keep letting him yo-yo my emotions like this. I can’t let him continue to have this kind of power over me.

I keep deluding myself that I’m something to him, something more than a possession, more than cheese to lure the rats out of my father’s Bratva so he can take over without an infestation. But it is only a delusion. He needs me now, when it’s over I’ll be thrown away with the mousetrap and the rats.

I could swear I saw something more in his eyes last night, that he wanted me and needed me and even enjoyed and cherished me but clearly, I saw what I wanted, not what was actually there. He has nothing but coldness in his eyes, the dirty chipped ice gray because they are ice, like the rest of him.

I’ll never be anything more to him than a possession. If only I could make myself necessary to him for good and all. But how? That’s a dead end, there’s nothing more he could want from me once this is over.

I asked Dmitry to disabuse me of this, he knew Yuri best, once. But there’s no answer, I listen, maybe the wind will tell me.

Nothing but silence.

Until I hear a truck racing its engine. I look back to see if it’s Yuri, but it’s not, it’s a strange red escalade racing its engine, spinning its wheels, then finally gripping the crushed gravel road and bucking towards me, out in the open. I freeze again, I can’t move, and fuck it, why should I?