“Where did you get this?”
“I found it in my wife’s icebox.” I neglected to mention the other samples I’d found. The body had been separated into sections. I’d have brought it in and reunited the limbs, but some were missing.
My throat had been dry since I’d found them, a manifestation of my inner dealings of the matter. Hard to swallow.
Embarrassingly, I assumed Vincent had paid money for her pastservices. Now, I realized they were bartering with something much more illicit.
Kostya looked alarmed, in that way you would expect ringing in the ears amid genuine shock. I couldn’t tell him the whole truth. Would he judge her? Would he judgeme?
I knew he would.
“I think Vincent was making her dispose of evidence.” In all fairness, this wasn’t a lie. “I need you to confirm it’s her,” I finished, sliding him my pocket sketchbook cautiously.
He opened the sketchbook to the charcoal etching of the hand from the last body I’d observed in his laboratory. I knew it was the same, I’m a man of detail—it was an exact match. I neededhimto see it. To trust that I was no monster.
His eyes flicked back and forth between the hand and the sketch, his mind making the connection, already beginning to justify my actions. With a long, dizzy sigh, he nodded.
Kostya was silent for a moment, staring down at the larger appendage before us, hyper-fixated on the glimmering signet ring against the sterile flesh. “So youdiddo it?”
“Yes.”
He looked me straight in the eye. “Answer me this once, as a kindness.Whydid you do it?”
“I did it for her.”
He nodded, weighing my answer against a feather in his mind. “Did you have anything to do with the disappearance of our fosters?”
I was careful about my words. “Would you believe they deserved different if I did?”
Kostya was known as a sensitive man, but this was the first time I’d seen him moved to tears.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“They’ll be here soon.”
“Please, Kostya, help me,” I begged, taking his hand and folding his fingers over a paper. “Call these numbers, at the specified times. Tell them where I’ll be. If you do this for me, there will be no one to punish you. You can testify against me if this doesn’t work, tell them I threatened your wife and child.”
“I would leave.” He cleared his throat, tucking the paper in his smock pocket, turning his back to me as he leaned against the table.
I nodded, stepping back to the door, but one thing kept me.
“When Hunt comes,” I began, Kostya glancing over his shoulder at me, “tell him I will be at the ballet.”
He looked confused, squinting as if I’d told a joke at a funeral.
“He’ll know what I mean”—I released a deep, assured exhale—“trust me.”
Chapter Forty-One
The Performer
I would say the feeling of belonging to nowhere was a new sentiment, but that would be a lie. Now it was more of a feeling of comfort, of being right all along. To be unattached was a gift; I just didn’t realize why until now.
After visiting my mother, I had no place to go. I attempted to return home, only to be met with a letter addressed to me at my doorstep, reminding me that I mustn’t remain there either. The night was lovely after the rain, so I preferred to be alone someplace new, a third place not for belonging or unbelonging.
I flipped the cream paper envelope in my hand, tracing over the jagged ripped seal. I didn’t move from the park bench until dawn awoke the bees and the birds for their morning routines. I felt silly. My tan walking suit was wrinkled, awkward water stains getting worse as it neared the bottom. My hair was nearly completely undone, half of it fallen from its pinnings.
It didn’t matter. Silly things mattered naught when you would soon be on the run from either your family or your husband.
