She's already turning. Already retreating.
"Stay," Yury says.
She stops. Looks at him. Looks at me.
I'm already on my feet. I don't remember standing. My eyes are on the thing in her hand, small, white and plastic, and my chest is doing something that I don't have a name for.
"Close the door," Yury says. His voice has changed. Something in it I haven't heard before. "Come in, Mia."
She closes the door. She takes three steps into the room and stops. Her eyes are on mine. Bright. Wet. Her lower lip is caught between her teeth.
"I was going to wait," she says. Her voice is unsteady. "I was going to wait and plan this whole surprise for tonight, but I just—I couldn't—" She holds up the test. "Two lines. I took three. They're all two lines."
The room goes very still.
I look at the test. I look at her. I look at the test again.
Two lines.
Something detonates in my chest. Silent. Massive. The kind of detonation that rearranges the landscape.
"Mia." My voice doesn't sound like mine.
She reaches across the remaining distance and I take the test from her hand and look at it. Two lines. Clear. Definitive. I set it on the desk.
I look at Yury.
Yury is looking at Mia with an expression I've seen exactly once before — the morning after his son was born, standing in a hospital corridor at four a.m. It's not a soft expression. Yury doesn't do soft. But it's something close. Something adjacent.
"Mia," he says. "Sit down."
She sits in the chair next to his. She's still shaking. I come around the desk and stand beside her. My hand finds her shoulder. She reaches up and grips my fingers.
Yury leans forward. Elbows on his knees. Those sharp, pale eyes, the same shape as mine, fixed on her.
"Do you understand what this means?" he asks. "Not just the pregnancy. The family. What having this child commits you to. The name. The life. All of it."
She doesn't flinch. She doesn't look away. I watch her straighten in the chair the same way she straightened that first morning when she walked into a kitchen full of Dubovich men and introduced herself.
"Yes," she says. "Of course I understand."
"This isn't a normal family. The child will carry obligations. Expectations. There will be things you learn about us that you cannot unlearn."
"I know." Her voice is steady now. The shaking has stopped. "I've been here long enough to figure most of it out. I know what this family is. I know what he is." Her hand tightens on mine. "I'm choosing this. I think I chose it that first night." She swings her eyes up to me and I watch them fill with tears which she presses back like a champ.
Yury watches her for a moment. Then he looks at me.
"She's better than you deserve," he says.
"I know."
"Don't waste it."
I smile at Mia. "I won't."
He stands. Picks up his coffee. Puts it down again, the tell, but different this time. He's not angry. He's something else.
He walks to the door. Pauses.
