I unwrapped her scarf and laid it carefully on the bed. Then unhooked the cord of the small heart pendant and set it beside it—Makari’s soil and Istanbul’s soil together, the two things I had carried across the world and back again.
I pulled open the drawers. My clothes were still there—all of them, undisturbed, exactly as I had left them. I crossed to the wardrobe. Rows of dresses, slacks, tops and sweaters, hanging in the same order as before.
He hadn’t touched any of it.
I didn’t know what to do with that information so I set it aside.
The ache in my breasts pulled me back. Massaging them several times a day hadn’t alleviated the discomfort—the milk still coming, the body still insisting, still keeping faith with a baby who hadn’t been there to receive it.
I grabbed a handful of clothes and rushed into the bathroom.
??????
When I opened my door there was nobykiposted outside. I glanced down the hallway and saw Bogdan standing by his door. I stepped out and pulled my door closed behind me.
The same white walls. The same cursive plasterwork. I paused at the top of the stairs—the kitchen below, the east wing rebuilt above it, the place where I had stood and calculated ratios and set a timer and walked away. It didn’t matter how he found me. He would have eventually. I understood that now. The resources of a man who owned the city. I had bought time and time was what Runa needed to exist safely in the world.
It was enough.
His door opened before I reached it. Runa’s cries spilled into the hallway.
I raced forward and he opened the door the rest of the way.
She was standing in a large mahogany cot, her chubby fingers gripping the rail, bouncing on the mattress with the furious energy of someone who had been waiting and was done waiting. The moment she saw me her face crumpled and her hand shot into the air.
I don’t know who cried first.
By the time I reached her we were both sobbing—her soft broken whimpers and my tears landing in her dark hair as I gathered her up. She hooked one arm around my neck immediately. The other hand found the scarf. Of course it did.
I scooped her up and held her body against mine and felt her settle—the particular weight of her, the smell of her, the warmth of a small person who had been looking for exactly this and had found it.
“Runa, my baby,” I cooed, my voice still unsteady.“Mama missed you so much.”
I glanced around for somewhere to feed her and only then noticed how much larger the room was than I remembered.
“You can feed her on the bed,” Vadim said, from somewhere behind me.“Her rocking chair is on its way.”
I nodded without looking at him and climbed onto the bed, arranging the pillows the way Runa liked them—the specific configuration of months of habit — and lay down as her fingers traced my face, checking me, reassuring herself.
As soon as my breast was bared she latched on so fast I hissed. Her hardening gums. The urgency of four days without this.
I closed my eyes and began to talk to her the way we did at home. About her day. What she had done. Who she had played with. I even told her about her mama being arrested, which wasn’t my finest hour but seemed important to mention. She held onto me as if I might leave again.
Tears trailed down my cheek and landed on his pillow.
She was so hungry, my baby girl. I shifted position so she could feed more and that was when I noticed Vadim standing at the side of the bed, looming over us in the dim room.
He didn’t say a single word.
His hands were stuffed in his trouser pockets. He just watched—silent, unreadable, his face giving nothing away—as Runa moved against me.
Runa whined, drawing my attention towards her, and I adjusted her position without looking up.
She drank her fill. Toward the end she fought sleep with everything she had, her eyes drooping and snapping open, her grip on my hair tightening each time she felt herself going under—as though letting go meant losing me again.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and held her tighter.
She didn’t let go.
