Then she turns back.
“You will meet me for tea tomorrow,” she says. “In the morning. The Fairmont. They still serve proper service,” she adds with a sniff. “Your American hotels are… lacking.”
Of course.
Tea time is something my grandmother has always taken seriously, but she developed a particular fondness for English tea time when she lived in England under special assignment for the Russian government, back before she married my grandfather. Something my family never discusses, but we all quietly know what she was trained to do.
Tea time for me is a formal interrogation dressed up in porcelain cups and scones, crossed ankles and fabric napkins.
“I hope you are ready,” she says, adjusting her gloves with elegant precision. “To defend your vows.”
A shiver slices down my spine.
“Babushka—”
“That is all.” She steps back toward the staircase of the studio, her bodyguard rushing ahead of her. “Tomorrow. I’ll pick you up. Don’t keep me waiting.”
“Don’t you need my address?”
Her bodyguard snickers at my question as they continue walking. Duh, of course she doesn’t; she’s probably known every step I’ve taken since I moved here at fourteen.
She’s almost gone when she pauses.
Turns.
Looks me over with eyes that see too much and forgive very little.
But then… so softly as if I almost think I imagined it—she says, “Your father and our family name aside. Your mother… would be proud of the ballerina you have become.” A beat. “And the woman.”
My throat closes.
She doesn’t wait for a response. She never does. And then she’s gone, down the staircase to the next level and out the door into Seattle’s bustling city.
I stand there, with my heart pounding against my ribs, my stomach twisting, sweat prickling my back. It feels as if the entire floor of this second story just shifted under my feet.
Tomorrow decides everything.
My marriage.
My future.
My freedom… and Scottie.
I press a trembling hand to my ring, to the warm metal that feels more like home every day.
“I fell in love,” I whisper, more to myself than anyone else.
And now I have to prove it to the only woman in my family who has ever told me the truth.
I pace the penthouse while I wait for him to get home, still in my robe, still shaking from the conversation with my grandmother.
I texted him that she had come to the studio. I told him she’s here because she wants proof. Real proof. The kind of proofyou cannot fake with photographs, or hand-holding, or rings, or staged wedding videos.
And Scottie…God. He doesn’t understand.
I cannot lie to that woman.
She will see through me the way she saw through everyone my entire life — politicians, businessmen, diplomats, bodyguards. She was raised to detect weakness and deception with a single inhale.
