Yevgeny comes for dinner on a Saturday. He's the youngest Orlov, and I can see it immediately. He has Anton's height and coloring, but where Anton is rigid and contained, Yevgeny is loose. Easy. He grins when he walks through the door, pulls me into a hug before I can extend my hand, and says, "So you're the one who finally got my brother to eat a vegetable."
"She didn't get me to do anything," Anton says from behind us.
"He ate asparagus on Tuesday," I tell Yevgeny. "Without complaint."
"Willingly?"
I pull a face. "I wouldn't go that far."
Yevgeny laughs. It's a big, warm sound that fills the hallway, and I feel something loosen in my chest. This is what family sounds like. Not the careful, measured interactions I grew up with in the Nevolin house. Just laughter. Easy, unguarded laughter.
I cook lamb. Slow-roasted with garlic and rosemary, the way my mother taught me. Roasted potatoes. A salad with walnuts and pomegranate seeds. Fresh bread that I pulled from the oven twenty minutes before Yevgeny arrived.
He eats like a man who hasn't had a home-cooked meal in months. Which, based on what Darya told me about the Orlov brothers, he probably hasn't.
"This is incredible," Yevgeny says around a mouthful of lamb. "Anton, if you ever do anything to mess this up, I'm marrying her myself."
"Over my dead body," Anton says.
He says it flat. Dry. But under the table, his hand finds my knee and stays there.
Yevgeny notices. I see his eyes flick down, then back up, and something like relief passes across his face.
After dinner, while I'm clearing plates, Yevgeny follows me into the kitchen.
"He's different," he says quietly, leaning against the counter while I load the dishwasher. "Since you."
I glance up at him. "Different how?"
"Less..." He searches for the word. "Tight. Like someone loosened the screws a quarter turn." He picks up a piece of bread from the basket and tears it in half. "Anton was always the steady one. After Lev died, he just locked everything down. Didn't grieve. Didn't rage. Just went cold and stayed cold and none of us could reach him."
My hands slow on the plate I'm rinsing.
"Artem deals with things by taking control. Anastasia deals with things by fighting. Anton deals with things by disappearing inside himself." Yevgeny looks at me. His eyes are the same pale blue as Anton's, but warmer. Less guarded. "You're the first person I've seen him come back out for."
I don't know what to say to that. So I say what I feel.
"He's a good man."
"He is. He just forgot for a while." Yevgeny pushes off the counter. Squeezes my arm on his way back to the dining room. "Don't let him forget again."
"I won't."
Later, after Yevgeny leaves with a container of leftover lamb and a promise to bring Anastasia and Lina next time, Anton and I stand in the kitchen doing the dishes together. He washes. I dry. We don't talk. We don't need to.
His sleeves are rolled to the elbow, forearms wet, hands working steadily through the plates and glasses. I watch him from the corner of my eye and think about what Yevgeny said.That Anton disappeared inside himself after Lev died. That I'm the first person he came back out for.
"Yevgeny likes you," he says.
"I suspect Yevgeny likes anyone who feeds him."
The corner of his mouth twitches. Almost a smile. I'm learning to read them now. The almost-smiles. The way his eyes change temperature from cold to something warmer when he's looking at me versus everyone else. The way his eyes find me in a room like a reflex he's stopped fighting.
"He told me I'm not allowed to mess this up," Anton says.
"Are you planning to?"
He turns his head. Looks at me. Water dripping from his hands, dish towel over his shoulder, sleeves rolled up. Domestic. Human. Nothing like the man who stood at that altar with ice in his eyes and told me the council could wait.
