I carry the tray through the house and out the back door, across the terrace and down the gravel path. The morning air is cold, heavy with the promise of the rain Mrs. Novak mentioned. The sky is the color of old bruises, swollen and threatening.
The greenhouse is warmer than outside, the grimy glass trapping what little heat remains from yesterday's sun. I set the tray on the workbench and survey my progress—the cleared aisles, the salvaged plants, the pots waiting to be filled with new soil.
It's starting to look like something. Not beautiful yet, but alive. Possible.
I eat mechanically, barely tasting the toast and eggs, my mind still churning through everything that happened last night. His touch. My response. The question I couldn't answer.
What am I to you?
I don't know. That's the problem. I don't know what he is to me either.
After breakfast, I throw myself into work with more aggression than usual. Ripping out dead plants, scrubbing pots until my arms ache, hauling bags of soil from the shed. I want to exhaust my body so my mind will shut up. I want to feel something other than this constant, gnawing confusion.
It doesn't work. The questions follow me through every task.
What do I actually feel for him? Is it real, or just proximity and trauma? If I had other options—if I could walk out the front gate right now and go back to my apartment, my school, my life—would I still feel this pull?
I don't know. And not knowing is unbearable.
I'm elbow-deep in a pot of dead soil when my fingers again hit something that isn't dirt.
Paper. Old, fragile, wrapped in what feels like oilcloth.
I pull it out carefully, brushing away the debris. The oilcloth falls apart in my hands, revealing a stack of envelopes, yellowed with age, tied together with a faded ribbon.
Letters.
I shouldn't read them. They're not mine—they're someone else's private correspondence, buried here for reasons I can only guess at. But my hands are already untying the ribbon, already pulling out the first envelope.
The handwriting on the front is masculine, bold.Maria, it says. Just the name, no address.
I open the letter.
My darling Maria,
The days without you are endless. I tell myself that this work is necessary, that I'm building something that will keep our family safe. But at night, when I lie awake in strange beds in strange cities, all I can think about is the way you looked the morning I left. Standing in the garden with the sun in your hair, refusing to cry even though I could see how much you wanted to.
You are the strongest woman I know. Stronger than me, certainly. I would have crumbled long ago without you to come home to.
I know this life is not what you wanted. I know you dream of something quieter, softer, a home without blood on the doorstep. I wish I could give you that. But this is what we are, what we were born into, and all I can do is love you as fiercely as I know how and pray that it's enough.
It will always be you, Maria. In every lifetime, in every world, it will always be you.
Yours eternally,Alexander
Alexander. Misha's father.
I sit back on my heels, the letter trembling in my hands. Love letters. Hidden in the greenhouse, buried in a pot of roses, preserved for decades.
Evidence that even in this violent world, real love existed.
I read the next letter, and the next. Alexander’s words are passionate, aching with longing, full of promises and regrets. He writes about missing her, about counting the days until he can come home. He writes about their children—Dmitri's stubbornness, Misha's sensitivity, Anna's laughter. He writes about wanting to be a better man, about fearing he'll never be good enough for her.
Sometimes I wonder if you would have been happier with someone else, one letter reads.Someone who could give you the peaceful life you deserve. But then I remember the way you look at me when I come home, and I know—selfishly, perhaps—that I would rather have you in this broken world than lose you to a better one.
You asked me once if I regret the choices I've made. The violence, the blood, the things I've done in the name of this family. The truth is, I regret all of it and none of it. I regret the man it has made me. But I cannot regret the path that led me to you.
When I close my eyes, I see our future. The children grown, the wars behind us, you and I in that greenhouse you love so much. Growing old together among your flowers. It's a foolish dream, perhaps. Men like me don't often grow old. But I hold onto it anyway, because hoping for something beautiful is the only thing that keeps me human.
