I huff a laugh at that. “Vitaly? No chance.” A useless memory keeps returning. Vitaly at six, standing under the old apple tree in our yard, small fists on his hips, looking up like the trunk has insulted him.
He’s afraid of climbing. Not of height. Branches talk back when you put weight on them. He hates that.
I show him how to do it. Hands flat, not grabbing with fingers. Three points on the tree at all times. Keep your chest close. Test the next hold with more patience than pride. He nods, bored. He wants a ladder. He wants certainty under his feet that comes from someone else’s work. I make him try anyway.
Halfway up he freezes. His breath goes thin and fast. He won’t look at the trunk like I tell him. He looks down at me and the ground opens under his eyes. His nails bite my wrist when I reach. I press him to the bark and tell him to breathe into my shoulder. Sap gets on his shirt. He cries because the shirt is ruined.
“I will buy you a new shirt?—”
“I like this one!”
My father stands on the path and sayslet him drop or he will never learn. Bridgette laughs and sayshe was born for rooftops, not trees.
I carry him down. He learns two wrong lessons. I will always take his weight. He never has to take mine.
The next week he wants apples again. He brings a stick and a boy from the neighboring plot. He orders the boy up the tree. He stays on the ground and smacks branches until fruit falls. When the boy hesitates, he calls him a chicken. The boy slips, and Vitaly steps back so he won’t be under him. The boy breaks his arm, while my son eats an apple and laughs.
I try again. He goes up three moves and stalls. He doesn’t listen to me, only to his pulse. Another disastrous lesson in panic and fear.
Tonight, he is the same boy, only this time trying to instill panic and fear in others.
People say sons are their fathers’ echoes. For years, I listened for myself in him but mostly heard other voices. My father’s contempt. Bridgette’s mocking laughter. The part of me that should live in his hands never took root.
He fears things that bend instead of breaking. Anything that has its own will is a threat to his mind. He would make slaves of everyone, if he had his way. That is why he breaks what he cannot stand on. If he can’t use something or break it, he’d rather burn it down.
The other two are twitchy about being shot at, so I add, “He will not climb a tree to get a better vantage point on me now. He would rather run away and try again another day. We’re clear.”
“What if he had help?” Fyodor asks.
“He wouldn’t do that. He wants to kill me himself.”
3
MINA
I wake before the babies.The quiet feels like a lie. Pipes tick. A bus sighs to a stop outside. Time to start the day.
My mother is already in the kitchen with the light on low. She pours coffee into my mug before I ask. That’s how we say good morning now—actions first, words after.
The babies rustle in their room. One small sound, then the matching one. Two heartbeats in stereo. My mother glances down the hall, then back at me. “It’s your long day. We’ll go to the park before lunch.”
“I’ll be home by six.” I try to make it true while I say it. She nods. She doesn’t tell me it’s usually seven.
I change diapers and measure formula and hand each bottle to a small fist that grips. Xander smells like clean cotton and sleep. Yuri yawns. When they stare at my mouth, I talk about nothing. The weather, the bus, the way I left my sweater at work yesterday and found it on the back of my chair. I keep it light when I’m with my boys. My mother smiles without looking away from them. A typical Wednesday morning.
I dress in the navy I keep for days with judges and partners. Flats. Hair back. Cardigan in my bag. The mirror shows a woman whose mouth tilts a little to the right now. She looks tired and focused.
I’ve never been able to lie. My face gives away my thoughts.
Our apartment is a rental that reminds me it’s temporary every hour. Paint flakes near the shower. The kitchen window rattles when trucks hit the pothole at the corner. We live here, but we don’t belong to it. We used to have a house—porch, lilac bush, pencil marks on a doorframe where my father measured my height. After he died, bills piled on the hall table until the table disappeared under them. A bank took the rest. We carried our life down the steps in boxes and made a new one with cheaper locks. My mother moved in with me, and we’ve been treading water since.
I kiss each baby and my mother’s hair and leave. The elevator stops on three for no one. I walk the last flight. Outside, the sky is bright and cold. The train is on time. I breathe and watch stations roll by like the names of people I will never meet.
At work, the lobby guard says good morning, and I say his name because saying people’s names matters. I badge in. My screen wakes up to fifty-four unread emails. I start with the ones I can kill in under a minute: confirm a reporter, push a meeting, track a courier. Mr. Kerr wants binders redone with new tabs for a noon pitch. The junior associate wants me to “work my magic” with the clerk—which means flirt until he gives in. The paralegal asks for a signature page that never existed. I line them up and do them in order. The copy room hums.
At ten I take mail to Records. The clerk stamps and sorts and always pretends not to notice my scar. I like her for that.
Back at my desk I open the Mitchell draft and start cutting the extra words lawyers use when they want to sound like they’re worth what our clients pay them. I leave comments in calm language so no one feels corrected, only improved. It’s a skill I earned by dating bad boys. You can’t tell them they’re wrong about something—you have to coax them into thinking the right idea was theirs all along.
