Our team will be in town, and though I know she doesn’t want to see me, maybe I need to see her. Closure, even if I get it in a crowd of hundreds of other people. I need to see her one last time. I won’t bother her or even send flowers backstage. I’ll just say my goodbyes to the stage and let her leave without knowing I was even there.
I open my laptop and find tickets.
It’s in the nose bleeds, but it’s all they have left. I book two tickets. Maybe Luka wants a last look at her, too.
I buy the tickets, close the laptop.
And sit in the dark, waiting for a night I never want to come.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
KATERINA
The elevator ride to the law office feels entirely too claustrophobic for my liking, and now I wish I had taken the stairs.
I fold and unfold my gloves in my hands as floors tick by on the screen above the doors. My heart is beating too fast, fluttery anduneven, like it’s trying to find a way out, and I’m having a hard time calming my breath.
You chose this; I remind myself. You made the deal to give him up. To give him back a life with his father.
You’re doing this because you love him.
The elevator dings.
The doors slide open onto a hushed, expensive-looking lobby—polished floors, glass walls, the kind of modern minimalism that always makes me feel like I’m in the wrong place.
“Mrs. Easton?” the receptionist asks, standing when she sees me.
I nod. “Yes.”
“Right on time.” She smiles efficiently. “Elena Sokolova has everything ready for you. If you’ll just have a seat for a moment, I’ll let her know you’re here.”
I sit on a leather chair that squeaks softly under me. My palms are damp. My legs feel weak. The clock on the wall ticks a little too loudly.
This is good, I tell myself. This is the last hard thing you have to do, and then before you know it, you’ll be in Moscow, and you can try to put it all behind you. Distance will help you forget the life you lost.
The things Scottie has given me—his kindness, his family, the theater, the movie candy, his body, his heart—they’re not things I can ever give back. But his father walking again?
I can give him that.
“Mrs. Easton?”
I stand too quickly, my knees wobbling.
Elena Sokolova is what I expect from one of my grandmother’s lawyers. She’s wearing a sharp suit, sharp jaw, sharp eyes behind rimless glasses. She shakes my hand once, briskly.
“Thank you for coming in,” she says. “We’ll just go over the documents together. It’s all very straightforward. My assistant is in the conference room as well.”
Straightforward.
Right.
She leads me into a conference room with a long glass table and a view of the city, her assistant putting sticky labels where I need to sign. And then she passes it over to Elena.
Elena slides it between us, and that’s when I see it all: My name is on top.
In Re: The Marriage of Katerina Popovich Easton and Scottie Easton
The breath catches in my throat.
