I read it again. Same words. Same line. Same neat, merciless type.
She didn’t die in childbirth.
The folder slips in my lap. I catch it against my knees, but barely. My whole body feels wrong, hollowed out and violently overfull at the same time. The floor feels like it’s moving. I grab the edge of the desk to steady myself and feel polished wood bite into my palm.
My father lied.
Every version of the story. Every time he told it. She hemorrhaged. It was too fast. Nothing anyone could do. Told with that flat voice, that bored delivery, while I carried the guilt of it for twenty-three years. My whole life, believing I killed my mother just by being born.
All those years I thought it was my fault she died.
My chest tightens so fast it turns into pain. I can’t get a full breath. I am back in every moment I ever let that guilt curl itself around my ribs. Every birthday. Every cold look. Every punishment. Every time I thought, yes, maybe I deserve this. Maybe this is what it costs to be the girl who lived when her mother didn’t.
But she did live.
A sound breaks out of me. I don’t even know what it is. Not quite a gasp, not quite a sob.
The pages slide from my lap and scatter across the floor.
I don’t even try to catch them. I am staring at nothing, at everything, at the shape of a life I never had. My mother carrying me out of a hospital. My mother holding me. My mother alive somewhere beyond that doorway in time, breathing and warm and real, and then not.
If she didn’t die giving birth to me, then what happened?
The question opens like a crack in the ground, and I know the answer is in this room. I know it’s probably in this folder. I know that if I keep looking, I will find something I can never un-find.
My fingers move toward the remaining papers.
“Digging around in the old files, hmm?”
Every muscle in my body locks.
I look up too fast, and the room seems to lurch with me.
Boris is standing in the doorway, arms crossed, filling the frame. My father’s attack dog. The man who does the jobs even Nikolai won’t touch.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” His gaze drops to the papers scattered across the floor, then lifts back to my face.
Slowly, he smiles. “Not sure you’re supposed to be doing that.”
37
NATALIA
Boris crossesthe room before I can get up.
His shoe lands on one of the scattered photos, pinning my mother’s face to the floor. He smells like cigarettes and cheap aftershave, and up close, the broken capillaries mapping his nose look like something I’d study under a microscope if I had the luxury of clinical detachment.
I don’t.
I grab the edge of the desk and pull myself up. Kneeling in front of Boris is not where I want to be.
“I was just…” I start, but the lie dies before it gets anywhere. The folder is open. The photos are everywhere. My mother’s face is staring up at both of us.
Boris looks down. His expression doesn’t change the way I expect. No alarm. No fury. Just a slow, spreading recognition, like he’s greeting an old friend.
“Well.” He picks up the photograph of my mother outside the hotel. Holds it between two thick fingers. “Haven’t seen these in a while.”
My mouth has gone completely dry and my fingers are trembling against the desk behind me. I lock them there and try to keep my face neutral. The same face I’ve worn my whole life in this house. Calm. Compliant. Nothing to see here.
