“Bedtime,” Avelina tells her.
“Can we tell Babulya?” Sofia asks her mom. “About the autism?”
“Yeah. We can tell who you want and when you want,” she replies.
She considers that, then nods. “Teeth brushing time.”
I nod with a faint grin. Because Sofia and I both love sticking to our schedules.
Avelina lingers beside me as she watches Sofia disappear around the corner.
“Thank you, Viktor.”
“For reading?”
“For making it all…so normal.”
“It is normal,” I say simply.
Her smile gets bigger. “You just taught her that.”
Something shifts under my sternum. It’s a click I know well from weapons, locks, and engines. Parts aligning. Not fixed.Just fitting together. “I didn’t plan it.” I want to look away because eye contact this long feels like a cliff’s edge. But I don’t. “I know that it doesn’t make me weak.”
“No. It’s just part of you. And that’s exactly what she needs to see. And you’re a strong role model for her.”
“Me? A role model? No, I’m not that.”
“Yes, you are, Viktor. You’re showing Sofia every day that having autism doesn’t mean that you’re not a strong person or that you can’t achieve whatever you want to in life.”
And her words make me wonder if despite my autism, I can really achieve the one thing I really want—love.
My chest tightens in a way that isn’t pain and isn’t panic.
It’s pressure from the inside.
I follow Avelina up the stairs as the men carry on with their cards. I think about the question that’s been gnawing at the back of my mind. Whether whatever I feel counts. Whether I’m building a thing with her that I can call love.
Maybe I can’t feel things in a ten out of ten way. But my heart is beating steady—and for once, the rhythm feels like it could be beautiful music.
Can I do this? Can I love even if it looks different from how others love?
In the quiet of the upstairs hall, the answer isn’t a trumpet or a revelation. It’s a simple ‘yes.’
Yes to what I can give. Yes to learning the rest. And yes to being seen as I am and not being less because of it.
Avelina’s silhouette turns to me in Sofia’s doorway, her hand held out.
And I go to her. With all my heart.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
AVELINA
At the weekend, I receive a text from Geliy’s mother, saying that she wants to visit the children. I wish I could say no, but Olga is their grandmother, so I arrange an afternoon for her to come to the compound.
Three days later, Olga is sitting on the couch, while Viktor, Babulya, and I sit opposite her.
Leon is in Olga’s lap. “He looks just like Geliy,” she exclaims. Perching primly on the edge of the couch like she’s afraid she might catch something while she’s here, she lifts the teacup I set in front of her, takes a sip, and immediately wrinkles her large nose.
