“I’ve got you, Lychik.”
25
Who was it?
Aurora
Shushed,angrycursingmixedwith words I don’t understand wake me from my sleep. That, and the cold spot beside me.
It takes me a second to figure out where it’s coming from before I see the lights on in our bathroom.
I get up, padding across the wood floor to the closed door where Severin’s having a very heated conversation with someone in his mother tongue. I’ll take a wild guess and say it’s someone from his family. They never show up. They never call and when they do, it’s never good. Sava’s told me a little bits about them. Who they are. What they do and I still can’t wrap my head around all that power they wield.
I don’t want to eavesdrop, but I want to make sure everything is okay like he’s been doing for me. And since I’m already up, I walk down the hall, propping the door to Emett’s room open so I can peek inside.
Sound asleep.
I let out a breath of relief.
It took us all a few weeks to process the events of that day. Emett’s been having a very difficult time with too many emotional roller coasters happening at once and he misses his grandpa something fierce. He hasn’t been able to deal with all of his feelings, so Sava got him into therapy right away.
It’s been a few nights now where he’s slept in his own room without coming to us.
And I’m not any better.
I can’t sleep without Severin. I can’t even go back to my own house.
I can’t do it. Can’t see the splattered blood from Betsy and Dad where Aaron and his friends tortured them. Can’t see the trashed rooms, broken windows, and furniture. At least, Betsy made a full recovery, and we’ve been to see her as much as we could, but those visits were mostly spent in tears and the feelings of crippling loss because over the years Betsy became so much more to Dad than just his nurse.
Stella wanted us to stay with her, but I can’t stand the sight of Iris Lake as a whole right now. I’ve lost too much there. So, instead, Sava went out there by himself right after that day to collect any memories that remained and brought us home to Boston.
Some days, the feeling of loss is still too much. It hurts and crushes me from within, but somehow Severin always knows, and those are the days he doesn’t let go of me.
He’s never once let me fall into the crippling grief, lending me his shoulder to carry it together. He made sure to give us as much of the good these days as possible. It started with redecorating our son’s room into his dream place and ended with him requesting extra days off from practices to stay with us longer.
Severin offered to go alone to court when the judge was reading Aaron’s sentencing, but I needed to be there. I neededto face my brother one last time. I needed to look into his dead eyes. That day I didn’t want to be the bigger person. I didn’t want to take the high road. I wanted to see him suffer for all that he’s done. I wanted to show him that Emett and I were thriving despite the torture he’d put us through. I wanted to smile and clap when they sentenced him to fifteen years in prison where he’ll die without seeing the outside world again as his disease takes him.
I’m not proud of those thoughts. But I am human. And he went too far, so I’m allowing myself to feel all that rage. I’m done stuffing it into deep corners and pretending I’m fine.
Quietly, I close Emett’s door and walk back to the master bedroom.
Severin is already sitting on the bed, his form cast in dark shadows as his gaze awaits my return. “Is he okay?”
“Yeah, sound asleep.” I smile and walk into his arms, climbing into his lap with my legs on either side of his.
“Good.” He kisses the crook of my neck.
“I heard angry Russian cursing.”
Sava sighs. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“It’s all right. Who was it?”
“My mother.”
“Oh.” In nearly the month that we’ve lived here, I haven’t seen her or heard any calls from her. “What did she want?”
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s go back to sleep.”
