Nearly a year ago, I was being told I had to marry a stranger to save the family. Eight months ago, I walked down an aisle in a black dress and looked at a man I recognized and said nothing and told myself I was protecting my children.
I was protecting them. I know that now, without the guilt I used to wrap around it. I made the choices I could make with what I had. Some of them were right. Some of them nearly got my father killed.
But I’m here.
In an office with my name on the door of a company my grandfather built. Working beside my father and my mother in a way none of us had managed before everything fell apart. Going home every evening to a house where my children are growing up, knowing both their parents. Sleeping beside a man who drove through the night and went through every room in a warehouse because he decided we were worth going through every room for.
I didn’t plan any of this.
But I built it anyway.
My phone buzzes. Luca.
Mila just informed me she has chosen the flowers for the wedding. I have been presented with a sample arrangement. It is predominantly purple. I didn’t know there were this many purple flowers.
I laugh out loud in my empty office. Type back:Tell her she has full creative control.
Three seconds.
She’s very pleased with this decision. Alexei is less pleased. He wanted trains as a centerpiece concept.
I’m still smiling when I put the phone in my bag and pick up my coat.
I turn off the office light and head home.
EPILOGUE
LUCA
Maxim has been rearrangingthe table settings for twenty minutes.
I watch him from the doorway of the dining room. He moves a candleholder two inches to the left, steps back, and moves it back. Adjusts the spacing between place settings with the focused dissatisfaction of a man who has run logistics operations across six countries and cannot get a centerpiece to sit right.
“It looks fine,” I tell him.
“The flowers are uneven.”
“They’re flowers. They’re supposed to be uneven.”
“Mila said symmetrical.” He steps back and looks at the arrangement again. Purple dahlias and something white I don’t know the name of, assembled this afternoon by my daughter with the seriousness she brings to everything floral. “She was very specific.”
“She’s not even five yet.”
“She was still specific.”
I leave him to it.
Viktor and Svetlana arrive at six. Viktor walks in without assistance, which he has been doing for two weeks now, and still seems faintly surprised each time, as if his body has agreed to cooperate but hasn’t confirmed how long the arrangement will last. He shakes my hand at the door, and the handshake is firm in a way that tells me more than anything he’s said about how he’s feeling.
Svetlana kisses my cheek. She started doing that three weeks ago without explanation, and I’ve decided not to examine it.
The twins are already in the dining room when we get there, having positioned themselves on either side of Maxim, and are now providing conflicting opinions on the centerpiece. Mila maintains that the white flowers should be at the front. Alexei maintains that the whole arrangement is blocking his sight line to the other end of the table and should be moved to the sideboard. Maxim is listening to both of them with the expression of a UN mediator.
Anna appears from the kitchen, where she’s been with Elena, confirming the final dishes. She catches my eye across the table and smiles briefly as we sit.
Dinner is duck with roasted vegetables and something Maxim requested specifically from a restaurant he likes in the city, a sauce I can’t identify but which Viktor approves of after one taste, which is the highest available endorsement.
The twins eat without complaint, which in itself is an event worth marking. Mila has decided that the occasion requires her best behavior, which she has defined as not spilling anythingand using both her fork and knife even for things that don’t require a knife.
