I’ve been staying out later and later since Sasha’s been away at camp. This big house with all its rooms looms a lot taller when she’s away. I’d rather not spend too much time here alone if I can help it.
Lucky for me, she’s due back in a little while, or so her texts said last night. The bus was dropping everybody off at the school and I had been planning on sending my driver to pick her up there, but she insisted that I not bother. Her friend’s mother is planning on dropping her off.
I noticed that she didn’t mention which friend or even the mother’s name. It’s been a few years since I’ve met any of them and even longer since I bothered to remember any of them by face. Before Mila’s death, I’d go with her to the PTA meetings and parent-teacher conferences. And after, I’d do my best tokeep up with Sasha’s education because, as she used to say, “it’s important that we’re present as parents.” But…
I don’t know. She’s been gone ten years. Members of the Bratva have lived and died in that time span. Buildings have been built and businesses have crumbled. And in that time, Sasha changed before my eyes by leaps and bounds. Lately, it’s like I blink and she’s gone from my little girl with her curly red hair in pigtails to the beginnings of a beautiful young woman.
I can smell the roasted scent of coffee as I walk down the stairs to the kitchen. Ares must have come in early this morning to make sure breakfast was on the table when Sasha arrived. I keep telling him he doesn’t have to do this shit. His talents are better spent outside my kitchen. And yet, I always seem to find him there on mornings like this.
I stop at the kitchen door and see him standing in front of the stove, cracking an egg and dropping the contents in a hot pan. He’s wearing a tank top and has his long, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. He’s got a cigarette burning between his teeth as he seasons the crackling egg.
“The fuck are you doing here?” I say.
He smirks behind the cigarette. “Morning to you, too, Brother.” He pauses to take it out of his mouth. It’s poised between his two fingers as he minds the cooking egg. “Sleep well?”
I don’t answer him as I walk over to the coffee maker. Instead, I say, “Who let you in?”
“You really are a hostile asshole before your coffee,” he mutters in Russian. “The great Colossus is disturbed from his slumber; everyone beware his wrath.” He snickers to himself. “It’s almostnine and you’re just getting up. This is how you want your daughter to greet you? Hungover, no breakfast, no welcome?”
“You sound like our mother,” I return in English. I take a sip of the black liquid. The sensation of warmth going down my throat and into my chest feels good. “And I’m not hungover.”
I turn around and watch him as he walks over to my fridge and looks in. “You need to go shopping.”
“Since you’re so interested in playing the happy housewife, why don’t you?”
“Hey.”
We both stop and see Sasha standing in the kitchen doorway. She’s still wearing the hoodie she left in and her blue jeans are hanging loose around her hips. She’s only been gone for two weeks and she already looks skinnier. Every bit of bitterness drains out of me the moment I see her.
“Hey, kid,” I say as I walk over to her and give her a hug. Her head rests against my chest, and that’s when I notice that her curls that hung just past her shoulders when she left two weeks ago are now barely past the nape of her neck. My hand immediately goes to her hair, running my fingers along the shortened curls. “What did you do to your hair?”
She pulls away from me, touching her hair self-consciously. “I needed a change,” she said.
Now that I see the curls, I see how different it makes her look. She still looks like Mila, the same big brown eyes and curly red hair. The same freckles sprinkled all over her face. Even the same mischievous smile that always seems to be playing at thecorners of her lips. But now her hair is short. Much shorter than Mila ever kept it. It makes her face look longer, more mature.
“You don’t like it,” she says.
“It’s different,” is all I can say.
“Hey, no hello for your uncle?” Ares jumps in, saving me from saying the wrong thing. Her smile returns and she walks across the room to give him a hug.
“Hi, Uncle A,” she says. She glances over at the stove and the cooking eggs. “Sunny side up?”
“That how you want it?”
She nods.
“Okay. Sunny side up it is.”
“Great. I’m gonna take my stuff up to my room.” She gives him a kiss on the cheek. “Be right back.”
As she walks away, all I can do is sigh. My little girl was never supposed to grow up this fast.
“That could have gone better,” Ares says.
“I know. It’s so fucking short, though.”
He snickers as he slides the egg onto a dish. “Want yours scrambled?”
