We don't kiss. She gives me her hand, and I give her mine, not fingers alone but palm to palm, pressure that tells a story our people can read.
"Pakhan and Pakhanessa," the old brigadier says softly enough to avoid violating the sanctuary with politics, loud enough to ensure the council hears it. This is not power seized. This is a house received with kneeling and with salt.
We turn to the people. All of them. The drivers outside with hot soup. The kitchen women who will not eat until plates are set for those who stood in the nave. The choir boys who will walk home in pairs along streets that will pretend nothing has changed and will be wrong. The Bratva stands for the benediction like parishioners at a Matins that finally warmed their hands. This is the brotherhood as God sees it when candles are lit and lies are hiding.
Sunlight touches the new glass as a blessing. A blade of gold slips through the repaired pane and climbs the nave. It finds the crowns, then the Gospel, then the ring on her hand, then my scar. The old window's saints receive their light through modern lead, and the union holds as if to teach Chicago that restoration is not rust.
I let the moment hold, the hall around the altar like a ship that has taken a blow and found her ballast again. I think of the men who will test us. I think of the women who will hold us. I think of the child who sleeps under her heart like a secret already turning into a charge. I hear Anatoly's last instruction without hearing it.Don't let them sell the altar.
She threads her fingers through mine where the red cord still binds and raises our joined hands so every row sees whose hand steadies mine. She looks at the council, then back to me, and inclines her head once, deliberate and calm. We face the room.
The nave holds its breath.
"My rule is not yours to fear," I say. "It is yours to deserve."
30
VALYA
Iturn the corner where a sedan used to idle and find it empty. I walk slowly, because a child in my womb turns each step into a count, and because for the first time, the city feels like a room that knows my name. The South End listens to my footsteps. Salt freckles the stoops. Iron rails keep their chill under a passer's palm.
Snow still trims the brownstones like an altar cloth kept for feast days, but daffodils pry up through the city beds and lift their small gold heads. They take the low sun and give it back in little coins of light. My palm finds the curve under my coat. It is early, still a rumor under wool. Warmth spreads, and I smile before I know it. I take in the city's thrum as if it were a hymn learned in winter and sung brighter in spring.
Two longshore stewards lift two fingers in greeting. Another turn brings me to the community center. A boy spots me and calls, "Mama Valya!" before he skips inside. The call runs ahead down the block. Heads turn, smiles open, andgreetings rise from doorways like candles catching from one wick to another.
Reza looks up from a copier.
"Welcome home," he says and tries to coax it back to life.
"This machine is beyond forgiveness," I say. "Replace it."
He grins, eyes crinkling, fingers tapping a friendly beat on the copier. "We don't discard the old simply because they age and wobble," he quips, lifting the room with him.
Together, we sort winter coats and job forms, circling the names of mothers who need child care for interviews. It is almost noon when I touch Reza's sleeve and say I need a short break.
I step out toward the corner bakery. Toma is there in the yard, dribbling a ball, his smile intact. He reads my mouth, his nod cheerful. Then he taps his chest twice to signwith you.I tap back.
The girl sets out black bread and a tray of poppyseed rolls glazed thin as ice. I look for honey cake and the battered tin of strong black tea. A single loaf waits on the top shelf like a kept promise. Two of our boys warm their hands on paper cups, coats zipped, eyes alert and at ease. There are watchers on this parish corner, but they keep the circle around us now.
I think of Dmitri. He takes the chair and refuses to make it a throne. He asks for the ledgers and reads them line by line. He calls in brigadiers, stevedores, and the man who runs the lot behind the customs shed. The keeper of theobshchakcomes to a plain table that sets three rules—widows first, noone pays tribute twice, and vows are kept in the open, not only at funerals.
At night, Dmitri walks the docks with Misha. He speaks straight to men who like hard orders, then adds in a low voice that any truck with our mark will carry food and family first until the day of Theophany. Everything else can wait. He calls off guns and calls in debts. It works. Since the Vigil, the river has not given back a name we know.
Sergei is a story told in customs lines and frosted mirrors. He slipped through Logan under a doctored passport built from a dead cousin's file, photo swapped, paperwork greased, and turned up in Hamburg, then nowhere. He will send letters before spring. He cannot hold his tongue when a city refuses him. A man like that mistakes silence for loss.
Aleksandr lives. He sits in a room with a bed, a crucifix, and a window that opens no more than a hand's width. He will leave this coast when the first ships cut the channel. Exile, not execution. That point is mine.
I set terms so mercy doesn't turn into a door left ajar. His accounts are frozen. His phones are gone. The name on his papers is one we issue. One flight, one city, no return, the ban is signed before two elders and the keeper of theobshchak. He checks in each week with a code phrase only we use. If the call fails, the room he left will be the room he sees again. We salt his path with one false detail. If it surfaces, the leak is named.
The elders frown the way men frown when they think mercy is a hole in a fence. I tell them mercy is a lock we choose to use because we intend to sleep and wake in the same house. Dmitri listens, then nods. The decision goesinto the book with his mark and mine. We do that now. Both hands for the same pen.
I return to the center, steam from a paper cup warming my fingers. The chalkboard lists homework, soup, and a coat drive. Reza is back at the copier, a smudge of toner on his thumb.
"You have done it." I chuckle.
"A new drum, a careful hand, and it will serve another season." Reza smiles, almost triumphant.
I laugh despite myself. "Order the drum. I will find a careful hand."
