“Are you sure about that?” Trish asked, shooting Yom a defiant glare.
“Da, she can be sure,” Yom answered flatly before Lydia could. “We Rustanovs treat our pets very differently than I am treating Lydia. You can ask any of them, including my Aunt Sirena, who is starting off as pet for my Uncle Bair.”
A tense, confused silence full of blinks and exchanged looks between the girls followed Yom’s reply.
Then Merry said, “I guess this is as good a time as any to announce that I’m definitely pregnant.”
This time, there was no silence.
“Oh my God, Merry,” Lydia said, immediately reaching across the table for her hands.
Meanwhile, Trish transformed from a lawyer in an American criminal justice show into a somewhat softer battle general.
“Tell us what you need from us right now,” she insisted, slipping an arm around Merry’s shoulders. “How can we support you in this difficult moment?”
For the rest of lunch, Yom was let off the hook while Lydia and Trish focused all their attention on making plans for the next steps with their friend, who was already mostly sure she would keep the pregnancy.
Then came Strategic Management and his old nemesis, Statistics. Those classes were followed by a particularly brutal practice. The Yolks’ coach was still punishing him for missing last Friday’s game with extended end-to-end sprints after all the other players were allowed to leave the ice.
By the time he returned to the lake house that night, all Yom wanted to do was shove some food into his mouth and fall into bed.
But he stopped short when he found Lydia in the kitchen with Rina and her grandmother, who was under strict instructions to leave his home before 7 p.m.
It was 7:15, but Pesya, the old lady he’d hired to do all his cleaning and cooking, was bidding Lydia to be “careful, careful” in the Judeo-Russian she sometimes spoke as she gently removed a pan from the oven.
Pesya’s face blanched when she saw Yom standing in the open front room.
“Oh, I am sorry. I know I am supposed to be leaving before seven pm,” she told him in Russian. “But your girlfriend asked me to teach her to makegolubtsi, one of your favorite dishes, and I thought to myself, yes, this is knowledge you would want her to have. Make for good wife.”
Yom’s chest tightened, and his expression must have looked pained to Lydia.
“I don’t know what you’re saying. I hope it’s not that I’ve completely messed this dish up,” she said, looking down at Rina’s tiny grandmother.
“No, you did it perfectly,” Pesya assured her with a pat on her shoulder.
Then Rina said, “C’mon, Baba, let’s get you home.”
Ten minutes and a hasty kitchen island setup later, Yom discovered that Pesya hadn’t just been being polite.
“This is delicious,” he told her after the first bite.
“Really?” Lydia’s whole face lit up. “I mean, it doesn’t even go a little bit of the way toward thanking you for that awesome study haven you made—or had commissioned….”
Confusion flitted over Lydia’s pretty face before she said, “It doesn’t matter. It’s just so great. I’m, like, all caught up with my schoolwork on a Tuesday in February. Which is crazy because usually I’m not caught up on anything until, like, a couple of minutes before it’s due.”
Her smile was thank you enough. But Yom knew it was still necessary to keep these softer thoughts to himself.
“It is a perfect meal for after practice,” he told her instead. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she answered, tucking into the meal herself. “Oh, wow, you’re right. These cabbage rolls are delicious!”
They ate in comfortable, not-awkward-at-all silence. And Yom was wondering whether he should send a somewhat-smug textto Pavel informing him of this when Lydia asked, “So how’s Statistics going?”
Yom shrugged.
“Unlike this year’s USCA Hockey Championship, I do not think I will come out victor in this case,” he confessed. “But do not worry, Rina is preparing to take final test for me so that I am able to graduate.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about you passing that class at all,” Lydia assured him with a gentle smile.
