“Let her talk to Claire,” he suggested mildly.
While it seemed to me that he was trying to pass the buck and leaving it up to his fiancée to sleuth out what Natalie was thinking, I understood that Natalie probably felt more comfortable talking about her concerns and feelings with Claire before she would even consider talking to me.
I was still too much of the enemy in her eyes—despite saving her life twice.
Despite how her daughter saw me as a source of security and comfort.
Until Natalie would approach me and ask me if we could talk about how her husband died, I felt obligated to give her space and let her re-acclimate to being here.
For the most part, she seemed to adjust well. She got closer to Claire and Anya. We all witnessed how their friendships built and grew and got stronger.
Natalie resumed being the homemaker, like she enjoyed before. Just without eye contact for me or speaking to me at all.
She was back in the kitchen, cooking and baking and tidying up the apartment too. Her days were spent with her daughter as they read, colored, and played, all the activities they did before Natalie took Maisie and left.
The rift that existed between Natalie and me didn’t stop her from wanting to be in other’s company. Yet, I didn’t push. Under the advice from my relatives, I waited and endured her cold shoulder treatment.
I would take it all. Her silence, her attitude—if she were to actually show me any. And I would be patient. Just like I had been patient before.
Still, I didn’t want to use Claire as an intermediary. She proved to be a resource as an in-between, though.
“It’s not hard to see it from her perspective,” Claire told me one afternoon. “She had her husband taken from her, taken in what she assumed was senseless violence.”
I didn’t remark that it wasn’t senseless. Nothing I did for my uncle was ever senseless. The operation that I set up over a year ago had a point. I arranged that sting against the Cartel to protect our business and our prosperity. It wasn’t senseless to me. “I agree that her husband and the couple of other citizens who were caught in the crossfire were senseless deaths, though.”
And those weren’t supposed to happen.
“I don’t think that Natalie blames you directly,” Claire said.
“She can’t,” Mikhail said dryly. At Claire’s smirk, he shrugged. “She can’t blame him for it. It’s not as though he went out and specifically knew her husband or hunted him down with the express motivation to kill him.”
She pressed her lips together and exhaled through her nose. “Yes, I understand that. And I think deep down, she understands that too. But you need to be gentle and remember that Natalie and I are not from your world. We were raised to view any kind of organized crime and the violence that comes with it as undesirable.”
Biased, you mean.
“Deep down,” Claire repeated, “I think she understands that her husband was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and that it is a tragedy.”
“I know,” I said. “I agree.”
“But it’s no easy thing to give up all that you know and believe. It’s not a simple thing to recalibrate your moral compass,” she explained. “She might just need the room and time to grow and adjust.”
I crossed my arms and sighed. “To the point that she would ever forgive me?”
She shrugged but wore a kind smile on her face. “I hope so. Wait out her hatred.”
“I will. I have been.” I shook my head, ready to walk away from the discussion. “So long as she is alive and within reach, I’ll hold on to the hope that she can still see me in a different light.”
My brother found me late that night, sitting on a patio space under the heaters as snow lightly fell. He sat with me, checking in on how I was doing.
“I just know that if I were you, I’d struggle to be patient,” he admitted.
I shrugged one shoulder. “You’re never patient.”
“And I’m also never settling down with one woman.” He grinned, a player at heart.
In that respect, he’d never get it. “I won’t give up on her.”
“I can see that,” he remarked.
