My mother’s hand stills on the kettle.
“I think he misses you,” I tell her.
“Then why doesn’t he come?”
“It’s complicated.”
“You always say that.” She picks up a biscuit from the plate beside her and examines it. “Alexei says Papa probably cried.”
“Alexei said that?”
“Last night. When we were in bed. He said big people cry too, they just do it where no one can see.”
My mother sets the kettle down and turns to look at me. I don’t meet her eyes.
“Can we call him?” Mila asks.
“Soon.”
“You said that yesterday.”
“I know.”
She eats her biscuit and says nothing else, and I stand there in my mother’s kitchen feeling like the worst person in any room I walk into.
Luca has called every day. Morning and evening, both times, without fail. I let every call ring out. He doesn’t leave voicemails, which is somehow worse than if he did. Just the missed call notifications stacking up on my screen like a quiet, patient argument I can’t win by ignoring it.
My father doesn’t talk about it. He moves through the house carefully, refilling his glass and avoiding rooms where I might be. He’s ashamed, I think. Of what he did and what it caused, and the fact that his grandchildren are sleeping in a childhood bedroom, asking questions nobody can answer cleanly. He looks older than he did four months ago. Smaller.
My mother is different. She doesn’t push, but she’s present. She makes tea and lets me sit with it without filling the silence, and sometimes I catch her watching me with an expression I recognize because I wear it myself when I’m watching the twins and worrying about something I don’t know how to fix.
On the fifth day, she sits across from me at the kitchen table after the twins go to bed and says, “You’re not sleeping.”
“I’m sleeping.”
“Anna.”
“A few hours.”
She wraps both hands around her mug. “What are you thinking about?”
“Everything.” I look at the table. “The documents. The timeline. How long he was planning all of it while I was just living my life thinking I was keeping my family safe.”
“And?”
“And the restructuring documents. The dates.” I exhale. “They’re real, Mama. I know they’re real. I looked at them the night he came here, and the dates are genuine, and the legal language is exactly what it should be.”
“So he was telling the truth.”
“About that. Yes.”
“But you still can’t trust him.”
“How do I? How do I look at a man who spent three years engineering the destruction of our family and trust that the version of him I got in the last few months is the real one? How do I know that’s not also engineered?”
My mother is quiet for a moment. “You don’t. Not yet.” She sets down her mug. “But staying in this house indefinitely isn’t an answer either.”
“I know that.”
