She touches me. This is the thing I keep circling back to. Small touches. Her fingers brushing mine when she passes me something, her shoulder pressing against my arm when we sit together, the way she leans into me when we're standing in a group. As if proximity to my body is something she seeks rather than endures.
Last night, she fell asleep with her head on my chest and her hand curled over my heart, and I lay in the dark listening to her breathe and felt something I haven't felt since before my father died.
Safe.
Not the strategic safety of controlled environments and calculated risks. The other kind. The kind that comes from having something worth protecting and knowing you'd do anything to keep it.
"You're staring." Grace's voice comes from beside me, dry and amused. She's appeared at the doorframe with a glass of water and the particular expression of a pregnant woman who is both uncomfortable and entertained.
"I'm observing."
"You're staring at your wife with the intensity of a man who has recently discovered feelings and doesn't know where to put them."
"Thank you, Grace."
"Anytime." She takes a sip of water. "She's good for you."
I glance at her. Grace doesn't offer opinions lightly. She's too precise for that, too aware of the weight words carry. If she's saying it, she means it, and she's thought about it.
"She's good in general," I say.
"She is." Grace pauses, watching Katya and Iris across the kitchen. "She has that particular look of someone who's just discovered they're allowed to take up space."
The observation is accurate enough to sting.
"Has she talked about her family?" Grace asks. "Her sister?"
"Not much. The subject is..." I search for the word. "Loaded." I grimace. That word doesn’t feel right either, but then I don’t think there’s a word in any language to even begin unpicking that.
"I imagine it is." Grace shifts the glass to her other hand, settling her weight. "Matilda Petrova is an interesting case. TheBratva circles talk about her like she's either a traitor or a revolutionary, depending on who you ask."
"And what do you think?"
"I think she's a woman who chose survival over loyalty to people who didn't deserve it." Grace looks at me directly. "Sound familiar?"
It does. More than Grace probably intends.
She leaves me to my coffee and my thoughts, and I spend the next ten minutes watching Iris help Katya with something on her phone, the first one she has ever owned, while Ma moves around them making lunch. The three of them orbit each other with the ease of women who've been sharing space long enough for it to feel natural.
Twelve days. That's all it took. Twelve days for my family to absorb Katya Lazovskia into its fabric like she'd always been here. Like the gap she filled had been waiting for her specifically.
After lunch the house has settled into its afternoon quiet. Ma is in the garden, Iris has gone to town, Liam and Grace are in their wing of the estate. God knows where my brothers are. Katya and I are in the study, which has become our space. The room where I work and she reads, or we talk, or we sit in the particular companionable silence that requires no performance.
She's curled in the leather armchair by the window with a book she found in my mother's collection. Something historical, I think. Her feet are tucked beneath her, her hair falling forward over one shoulder, and the light through the window catches the curve of her cheek in a way that makes concentration difficult.
"Can I ask you something?" she says, without looking up.
"Always."
She marks her page with a finger and meets my eyes. "Do you think Matilda was right?"
I set down the document I was pretending to read and give her my full attention.
"Right about what specifically?"
"About leaving. About giving up Sergei. About..." She pauses, choosing carefully. "About choosing a stranger over her family."
I consider the question the way I consider everything; from multiple angles, with attention to what's being asked and what's really being asked. Because with Katya those are rarely the same thing.
