26. Bronwyn

26

brONWYN

I hadn’t had the nightmare for three nights. I’d been hoping that meant I’d finally shaken it off and left it to die in Baba’s apartment. But that night, as I lay sleeping in the penthouse, it caught up with me.

It was a beautiful Fall day and the trees outside our house had formed a rustling, gold-and-scarlet canopy overhead. Already, the sidewalk was ankle deep and just the whump of me slamming the door of Baba’s Volvo made another few leaves drift down.

The drapes were still closed, even though it was past nine. “We’re a little early,” muttered Baba. “They may still be asleep.” It was Sunday and dad did like his Sunday morning lie-ins, sprawled on his back, shaking the house with his snores. She ruffled my hair. “Want to go to the park for a little while?”

I grimaced. “I need the bathroom.” Then I thought of something and grinned. “Give me your key, I’ll sneak up and surprise them.”

Baba considered. “Okay,” she said at last. “But if their bedroom door’s closed, you knock before you go in there, you hear?”

I nodded and she passed me the key. I bounded up the steps with an eight year-old’s enthusiasm and slotted it into the lock, then quietly turned it. Hopefully I could make it all the way to their room without waking them.

I inched open the door and started up the stairs, quiet as a cat burglar. I couldn’t hear my dad snoring...were they already up? But the kitchen was quiet, and the lounge was dark. I crept higher and peeked around the landing. Their door was ajar.

I was on the last stair when a floorboard creaked. I froze, wincing...but the bedroom stayed silent. I opened the door a little wider and slipped inside, and now I could see the mountain of my dad’s body under the covers and the smaller, slimmer hill of my mum, nestled alongside him. I grinned and slunk sideways, planning my attack. This had to be perfect. A jump onto the bed, then a second jump right on top of my dad, and as he came awake, I’d ride him like a whale.

One. Two. Three!

I jumped up onto the bed and then launched myself forward, starfishing myself atop my dad. “It’s morning!” I yelled and then clung on tight, waiting for the grumpy earthquake.

But he didn’t move. At all. Neither of them did. They knew, I realized. They’d heard me creeping up the stairs and they were pretending to still be asleep.

There was only one thing for it: tickles! I snaked my hands under the covers and found the backs of their necks, tickling madly?—

But they didn’t move. And they were cold. There was a lurch in my chest as it clicked that something was very wrong.

“Wake up.” I took a shuddering breath. “Wake up!” My voice went brittle as I shook them. “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

I surfaced in a blind panic, soaked in sweat. I scrambled out of bed and crawled across the room, trying to get as far away from the memory as possible. I made it to a corner and pressed myself against the wall, hyperventilating. And then, as I came fully awake and remembered for the millionth time that it wasn’t just a dream, they’re dead, I started to cry.

The bed creaked as Radimir got up. He moved cautiously around the bed, trying to find me in the dark, then slowly padded over to me. “Bronwyn?” He switched on a lamp and stared at the tears flooding down my cheeks. “What is it?”

I wanted to say nothing, a nightmare. But I was still eight, still feeling their cold skin under my chubby little hands. And at the same time, I was twenty-seven and they were gone and never coming back and Baba had left too, and Nathan had left, and I was all alone and now I was locked in this marriage forever and—I looked up at him through a haze of tears and shook my head helplessly.

He slipped his arms around me and hugged me to his chest. And I threw my arms around him and clung on hard, like he was a six-foot teddy bear. He smoothed my hair. “Shh Krasavitsa ,” he breathed. “I’m with you.”

It made no sense: he was a monster, he’d killed a man right in front of me, and he was the reason I was never going to be able to fall in love and marry someone for real... But I clutched him and sobbed into his shoulder, my tears rolling down his back, and gradually, my sobs started to slow. I unwound myself, sniffing and embarrassed.

“What was it?” he asked, his voice surprisingly gentle.

I shook my head.

He turned around and awkwardly sat down next to me so that we were side-by-side against the wall. His shoulder snugged up against mine, huge and warm. “Tell me,” he said, his voice gentle but firm.

I gaped at him. Tell him? I barely told anyone. I’m an adult, I should be over it by now. But he stared back at me, those frozen-sky eyes infinitely patient.

And, haltingly, I told him the whole thing. “It was carbon monoxide poisoning,” I said when I’d finished. “A seal had gone. A two-dollar piece of rubber.” I closed my eyes and rested my chin on my knees, all talked out. After a few seconds, I felt his arm wrap around me and his hand gently squeeze my shoulder, and we stayed like that until his phone alarm went off, telling us it was morning.

“Thank you,” I said awkwardly, as he strode across the room and silenced his phone. I felt better for telling someone, even if he was the last person I ever thought I’d tell.

“You needed someone,” he said simply.

I looked at my toes, embarrassed. “It was just a nightmare.”

He shook his head. “They’re not just nightmares.” He looked away...and then his jaw set, and he seemed to make a decision. “I know,” he admitted. And then he turned and walked out, headed for the bathroom.

He has them too. I stared at his retreating back, stunned. What could give a man like him nightmares?

The next day, I borrowed Jen’s car so that I could move my stuff into Radimir’s penthouse. I was hoping that having my things there would make it feel a little more like home. Jen’s car is a twenty-year-old station wagon that droops on its suspension like it’s permanently depressed, and it still has butterfly stickers along its sides from when it was a rolling advertisement for Jen’s failed home-visit nail salon business a few years ago. But it’s still six thousand times better than my car because I don’t have a car.

The elevator at my place still wasn’t working so packing my stuff into boxes and getting them all down the stairs took ten journeys up and down four flights and by the end of it my knees and ankles were so tight with pain that I could barely push the car’s pedals. With hindsight, I probably should have waited a few more days to let the immunosuppressants kick in. But I was here now, and I wasn’t giving up.

I grimly drove to Radimir’s penthouse, parked in the underground parking lot and started taking boxes up in the elevator, then carrying them along the short hallway to his place. By my third trip, my legs were shot. I kept staggering sideways like I was on the deck of a rolling ship. I was slumped against the wall, trying to gather up the strength to carry on, when I heard a stern Russian voice behind me. “What are you doing?”

“Moving,” I grunted, not looking around. I tottered another few steps. I wouldn’t let him see me being weak.

“I can see that.” Radimir sounded testy. “But do you have to kill yourself to do it?” He stalked over and plucked the box from my arms like it weighed nothing. I glared. “There are people who do this sort of thing,” he told me.

“I can’t afford a moving company,” I kept my eyes on the door of his penthouse and stumbled another step.

“I would have paid for one,” he snapped. Why was he in a bad mood? Was he worried I’d drip sweat on the carpets? Which, to be fair, I was. He marched off into the penthouse and put the box down. I tried to hobble after him, but the first step made my left ankle light up cherry red with pain and I had to grab the wall to keep from falling.

Radimir marched back to me, his face furious. I avoided his eyes. He ducked and?—

“Stop!” I yelped as he scooped me up. “You don’t need to—Jesus, you can’t just pick me up whenever you?—”

“I can and I will.” He straightened his legs, boosting me into the air and cradling me against his broad chest, and I went a little heady. Just head rush, I told myself angrily. He stalked into the penthouse and laid me gently on the couch. “ You will stay there. I will be your moving company.”

“But—”

“No buts.” He glared at me and?—

It was the first time I’d met his eyes. I could see something flickering, behind all that frozen gray. A deep, protective need.

He was mad. But not at me, at himself. He thought he’d caused me pain, by making me move in with him. I swallowed and went quiet.

Radimir marched out into the hallway, and I finally listened to my body and let myself just flop on the couch. I was pretty sure that if someone poured cold water over my knees and ankles, steam would billow off them.

He carried the boxes in two at a time, arranging them in precisely straight rows. By the time he was done, I was capable of helping again, even if I wasn’t capable of standing. I crawled over to the boxes, opened one and started figuring out where things were going to go.

Radimir paced around as if he didn’t want to interfere but wasn’t going to leave me alone to over-exert myself, either. “What’s this?” he asked, touching a four foot long something wrapped in towels that was leaning up against the wall.

“Nothing!” I grabbed the bundle and put it protectively behind me. I’d hide it somewhere later.

“What’s in this one?” he asked, nudging a box with his toe.

“Books.”

“And this one?”

“Also, books.”

He nodded politely but he looked bemused. As if reading, relaxing, doing anything fun was alien to him. Does he do anything aside from work?

I dug through the box and pulled out a blanket. It was hand-knitted, a mix of pink, pale green and yellow.

“What’s that?” He sounded annoyed but curious. Maybe annoyed because he was curious.

“Baba—that’s my grandmother—knitted it for me. It’s been on my bed ever since I was a kid.” Just running my fingers over the soft wool made me feel better. Then I looked around at the penthouse, sighed and stuffed it back in the box.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

I gave him a look. “It doesn’t fit in here.” I waved at all the stainless steel and granite, at the designer light fittings that probably cost more than my rent. “This place is too...cool.”

He pulled the blanket from the box and stalked into the bedroom. Through the open door, I saw him spread the blanket out on the bed. I felt myself bite my lip, and a warm ache started to spread through my chest. Don’t, I warned myself.

He walked back to me, scowly and gorgeous. “This…” he blurted, gesturing at the penthouse. “Not having personal things...it’s not... cool.”

And suddenly, everything flipped around in my head. When I’d first seen the bare, soulless penthouse, I’d assumed he’d ruthlessly shed all his personal belongings because he saw them as a weakness. But what if...what if he never had any? What if he lost everything, every photo of a loved one, every heirloom, every beloved childhood toy.

I saw the ice in his eyes fracture and melt and he quickly looked away. I was right.

“Tell me where you want things,” he told me. “So, you don’t have to move.”

I nodded quickly and started unpacking. But inside, my mind was whirling. What the hell happened to his family?