The deli is bright and loud. The chalkboard lists specials that are never special. I order fast, pay, and stand to the side as the counter guys stack paper-wrapped rectangles into bags. A flydrones at the window. A toddler smears a hand on the glass. I look up to kill a second, and I see him on the sidewalk.
Vitaly stands across the street, face angled away from me, but I know the line of his jaw. He wears a cap low. He pretends to look at shoes in a window. He keeps his body at an angle that would photograph well. It always did. He is exactly where he can watch the deli door and also where he can turn and vanish if I move toward him.
My body answers before my mind does. My throat tightens. My fingers go cold. I do what the nurse taught me after the clinic when she saw my face and didn’t say anything, just told me to breathe through the nose and out through the mouth until the pulse lets go.
“Order for Kerr,” someone calls. I move. I do not look at the window again. I stack bags. I thank the man at the register. I step out into the sun and turn left without pausing. Vitaly stays where he is like a shadow you try to step on. I don’t look at him. I walk.
At the first corner I join a group crossing and then I cut through a lobby I know has a back exit to a different street. I don’t run. My heart does. The door is heavy. I push through and join a line of office workers who don’t know they are my cover. The sandwich bags are heavy, but I hardly feel it. I keep my face neutral. I don’t look back until I’m under our awning. When I finally glance over my shoulder, he isn’t there. He could be anywhere. I go inside and badge in with a hand that wants to shake.
“Hero,” says the junior associate when he sees the food. He has no idea. I pass out lunch and keep one for myself even though I can’t taste anything right now. I take two bites because my mother told me to eat. I drink water. The day moves like italways does, a straight line of tasks that keep others from falling apart.
All afternoon I think about the deli window and the angle of his shoulders. I think about the way he smiled when he wanted something and how it looked exactly the same when he was about to hurt me. Look at the clock. Count to ten. Answer an email about misplaced exhibits and I find the exhibits and I put them where they need to go. Check the front doors again at three. All of it automatic pilot, because I’m not here right now. My body is, but my mind is a million miles away.
By five the floor starts to empty, and the silence makes me itch.
I text Mom to let her know I’m heading home, and I change flats for sneakers. The train platform is a wall of coats. He could be any of them.
I choose the car with the most light. I stand near the door but not at it. Every man is a problem for the first two seconds and a stranger after that. I get off one stop earlier than usual and ride the bus for three blocks because that’s what I planned. It slows me down. It also means no one can pace me from the station to my apartment without being obvious.
The block looks normal when I turn onto it. The bodega owner has the door propped open. Two kids argue about a scooter. A woman drags a trash can to the curb. I let my shoulders drop a little. In the lobby I check the mailbox I already checked this morning, like I always do.
“Hi, Ms. Harbor,” says the super when he passes me on the stairs.
“Evening.”
At the apartment door I listen. Inside, my mother is singing under her breath. It’s the song she used to sing when I was small and scared of storms. I unlock the deadbolt. I lock it again behind me. A deadbolt won’t stop Vitaly, but the inconvenience will annoy him. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.
My mother looks up from the floor where she sits with the boys. “Good?”
“Good enough.” I’m not lying. I’m home. The bad thing didn’t happen today. That counts.
We feed them together. Xander kicks and laughs milk at me. Yuri concentrates like eating is work. These boys are the reason I’m still breathing. After my catastrophic breakup with Vitaly, I needed a reason to keep going, and they gave it to me. They mean everything to me, and I will do anything to keep them safe. Even if that means facing the man of my nightmares.
Mom and I talk about nothing. The pediatrician called. Shots next week. The formula brand downsized but the price didn’t go down. My mother saw the neighbor’s cat on the fire escape and thought it was a raccoon. She’s tired. The usual. Neither of us say his name.
There is a knock at the door.
It’s a simple sound. It empties me. My mother’s eyes snap to mine. We don’t speak. She lifts Yuri and I lift Xander and we put both boys back in the playpen. My mother wipes her hands on a towel. I wipe mine on my jeans. We stand still for a second like the floor might tell us what to do.
The door is wood and old. The chain is thin. The lock is a lock but not a shield. If it is him, the door is not the thing that will keep him out. I know that. I also know that if it is him and I don’topen the door, he will go around me. There are two babies in this room with my eyes and a little of his father’s chin. I can’t let him in.
If I can talk to him, maybe I can keep his attention on me long enough to think. Maybe I can bargain. Maybe I can remind him of something human. Maybe none of that will work.
There’s only one way to find out.
“Stay back,” I tell my mother. She nods and moves to the side, phone in one hand, butcher’s knife in the other.
I go to the door and put my eye to the peephole. It’s too dark to see anything but a shape. I take a breath to steady myself. “Who is it?”
A beat. And then, a low growl. “Roman Ekimov.”
I stop breathing.
I look at my mother and shake my head so she doesn’t call or stab anyone yet. I open the door just enough to see him. He fills the hallway without moving. He looks exactly as he did the night he pressed a button and made the world smaller. Controlled, eyes on mine and nowhere else. He takes in my face, my hands, the apartment behind me, the sound of the boys, and he doesn’t flinch.
“What are you?—”
“I know the twins are mine.”
