“Because he did something that hurt our family.”
“Did he say sorry?”
“He’s trying to.”
Alexei considers this with the gravity of a small person who takes apologies very seriously. “Then maybe you should stop being angry.”
“It’s more complicated than that, baby.”
“You always say that.”
Mila climbs back into her chair and reaches for the last pancake. “Grandma says when people say it’s complicated, it means they don’t want to explain.”
My mother, appearing in the doorway with a dish towel, has the grace to look slightly guilty.
“Grandma says a lot of things,” I tell them.
After breakfast, I help my mother with the dishes while the twins take over the living room with the building blocks my father found in the back of a closet. Old ones, wooden, that used to be mine. Alexei is building something architectural. Mila is building something she describes as a castle but which looks more like a very tall pile.
My mother washes. I dry. We don’t talk for a while.
“You seem like you’ve made a decision about something,” she says eventually.
“I’m always making decisions.”
“This one is different. You’ve had that face for days.”
“What face?”
“The one you had when you were sixteen and decided to take my car without asking. Very calm. Very certain.” She hands me a mug. “Very about to do something I won’t like.”
“I’m going to run some errands this afternoon. I need you to watch the twins.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “What kind of errands?”
“The kind that need doing.”
“Anna.”
“Mama, please.” I set down the mug. “I know what I’m doing. I just need a few hours.”
She looks at me the way she’s been looking at me my entire life, that particular combination of knowing and resignation that means she sees through me completely and has decided to let me make my own mistakes anyway. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
At two o’clock, I tell the twins I’ll be back before dinner. Mila barely looks up from her castle. Alexei watches me put on my coat with those careful eyes and says, “You look like Papa when he goes to work.”
“How so?”
“Like you’re thinking about something serious.”
“I’ll be back before dinner,” I say again. “Be good for Grandma.”
The drive to the eastern district takes twenty minutes. I keep the radio off and run through what I’m going to say. I am Anna Volkov. My husband’s operation and the Malikov network have a shared interest in stable territory. Whatever surveillance has been conducted on my family’s home is creating unnecessary tension that benefits no one. I want to discuss terms that allow both sides to move forward without escalation.
Clean. Reasonable. Businesslike.
Luca would laugh at me if he knew. Or he’d be furious. Probably both. But Luca isn’t here, and the whole point is that I stopped waiting for Luca to fix things that I can fix myself.
