“Twenty-six. We’re two and a half years apart.”
“What happened to her? You mentioned something in the orphanage?”
He hadn’t wanted to ask before, fearing it would make him too sympathetic toward her. But clearly that cat was already out of the bag. Besides, it could be helpful. He knew Kate was still looking into the adoption agency, but she hadn’t come up with much beyond the link with Mick.
Natalie stiffened and her gaze dropped. She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them as if she were cold. He wasn’t sure she was going to respond, but then she said, “It was a long time ago. We were both so young. I was three when we went into the orphanage and Lana was only six months old. Just a baby.” She smiled wistfully. “She was so beautiful. My mom called her Kukolka, which is something akin to baby doll. It’s one of the only memories I have of her—and one of the few Russian words I remember.”
“What happened to them? Your parents?”
“They were ballet dancers. They tried to defect during a performance but were delayed in waiting for Lana and me to be brought to them after the show. One of their watchers found out and reported them. They were imprisoned and shortly after I was told by one of the supervisors at the orphanage they’d died. The irony, of course, was that the Wall came down, and the USSR dissolved not long after they were arrested. If they’d waited a few months maybe...” Her voice fell off, and he knew she was thinking of all the things that would have been different. “It’s funny. I have so few memories of them—bits and pieces or flashes here and there—but I remember being happy and loved. Maybe that’s why what happened afterward stands out so sharply in comparison.”
Scott found himself tensing—as if bracing himself. “They were cruel to you at the orphanage?”
After seeing what the Russians had called a prison at the gulag, he didn’t imagine a late Cold War orphanage was much better.
She thought for a moment and shook her head. “No. That’s the thing. They weren’t cruel, just indifferent. Although in retrospect maybe it amounted to the same thing. But if you are envisioning Dickensian characters or Nurse Ratched, the women who took care of us weren’t like that. They were just cold and efficient—sterile like the orphanage itself. I remember thinking when I got there that the world had suddenly gone gray. The orphanage was colorless and joyless. In that respect I guess it was like you picture in the movies—some kind of asylum but with kids.”
“Sounds pretty bleak.”
“It was. But when I read about it later, I realized that at the time they thought they were doing the right thing. The doctors and child specialists thought it would be easier for us to form attachments once we left the orphanage if we didn’t form them while we were there.”
Scott remembered seeing something about this in the papers when there were some problems with Russian adoptions. Maybe the caretakers at the orphanage hadn’t been intentionally cruel, but it had led to some kids with severe emotional-attachment issues.
“I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing what else to say. “That must have been horrible.”
She shrugged. “We were only there a little over two years. And Lana and I had each other.” He suspected there was a lot behind that statement. “We were lucky the Anderssons were patient. Actually we were lucky in more ways than one. At first they wanted only one child. They picked me, but I went crazy when they tried to take me away from Lana. Instead of throwing me back like most people would have done with a hysterical child, they agreed to take both of us.” Tears were shimmering in her eyes when she looked up at him. “I loved them with everything I had from that moment on. To take any child from an orphanage requires a generous heart, butto take a toddler with special needs... that requires generosity of an entirely different kind.”
Scott had never met her parents, and her father had just threatened him on the phone, but from that moment they’d earned his gratitude, respect, and loyalty, too. He’d do his best to make damned sure nothing happened to them. Natalie had put her trust in him, and he wouldn’t let her down.
He waited for her to continue, aware that she’d circled away from his original question. But she came back to it. “The women who looked after us at the orphanage were for the most part fine as long as we were quiet and behaved. Which was okay for me, but not for Lana. She was colicky when we arrived and cried all the time—especially that first year. I did my best to keep her quiet, and spent most nights curled up on the ground beside her crib holding her hand and rubbing her back.”
Scott looked at her. “Jeez, Nat. What were you, three?”
“I was four when it happened.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “I was caught up in a game of jump rope. We weren’t allowed outside to play very often, but this was a special occasion since someone high up in the new government was coming to ‘observe.’ Lana hadn’t been crying as much lately, and I somehow lost track of time. I raced back but it was too late.”
Tears were slipping down her cheeks. He couldn’t keep his distance any longer. He stood from the bed, walked over to the chair, and lifted her up long enough to sit and deposit her on his lap. She snuggled into him like a child, drawing comfort from his warmth and strength. It made him feel strangely powerful and his chest expanded until he could barely breathe.
He stroked her hair. “What happened?”
“She must have awoken early from her nap and started crying because I wasn’t there. When I came in, one of the new nurses was holding her limp body away from herin her hands. I thought Lanie was dead and started screaming. I remember one of the head ladies coming in and the new one saying over and over that she hadn’t done anything; she’d just shaken her a little to try to get her to stop crying.”
Scott let out a low curse. “Shaken baby syndrome?”
Natalie nodded. “I didn’t know what it was called then. I just knew that when Lana came back from the hospital she was different. She didn’t act the way she used to. She was quiet and laconic. She didn’t cry as much, but neither did she smile. She improved a lot when we came to America, but she’s blind in one eye, has some cognitive delays, and occasionally has seizures.”
“You were practically a toddler yourself, Natalie. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know,” she said, as if it was something she’d said many times because it was easier than disagreeing. But she clearly didn’t believe it.
He intended to see that she did.
It was also clear where her protectiveness toward her sister—and her family for that matter—came from.
“Is there anything else you remember about your time at the orphanage? I wouldn’t ask but it could be important.”
She shook her head. “Not much more than I already told you. Because my parents were Soviet ‘traitors’ Mick told me I was put into a secret sleeper spy program to pay for their crimes.”
“The program continued after the fall of the Soviet Union?”
