“If he doesn’t want to be your friend anymore after spending time with you here, then he’s not the boy you’ve been describing to me,” I tell her firmly, feeling like my heart might break at her worries. “Good friends could have nothing better to do than watching paint dry and still enjoy each other’s company in the process.”
Anya frowns, looking lost. “I-I guess.”
“Does he not know of your routines? Has he not only ever seen you in your home while you do your little FaceChats?”
“FaceTime,” she mumbles, hiding a smile at my mistake.
“Whatever you kids are calling it,” I reply with a huff. “My point is, Matteo already knows that you prefer to stay home. He already knows what you do for fun. If you don’t feel up to leaving the house at all, then you’ll stay here. You’ll share a meal, walk the gardens, take him on a tour of the house, I don’t know. My point is, the boy is fully aware of your limitations, and he still wants to come, doesn’t he?”
“I guess so,” she says, exhaling slowly. “You won’t be mean to him if he comes, will you?”
A low chuckle rumbles in my chest. “Well, that’s another topic entirely, isn’t itdochen’ka?”
She gives me an unimpressed look, pursing her lips. “You shouldn’t be mean to guests, Papa. It’s not very good manners.”
“Scolded by my own flesh and blood,” I comment, smothering a laugh. “I feel like you’re six years old and reminding me to lift my pinky at your tea party table.”
“Only Ivan ever did it without prompting,” Anya says, a small nostalgic smile lifting her lips. “You and Dmitri were very poor tea party guests. You never put your napkins on your laps either.”
“The napkins were the size of your smallest plates,” I point out in protest. “There were tissues larger than those little things,they would fall right off our legs if we put them on more than one thigh.”
“You could have bought me bigger ones,” she replies stubbornly.
“I tried!” I insist, laughing at the memory. “I could never find the exact pattern you wanted. Your tea set was no longer being made, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get anyone to replicate the cloth napkins in a bigger size.” Or at all, really.
Anya giggles, eyes sparkling. “I didn’t know that. I’m surprised to hear that there was something that Anton Morozov, Pakhan, couldn’t get done, though.”
“And your uncles never let me hear the end of it either. Any time Lev sees a pink pattern even remotely similar, or uses a cloth napkin, I swear he gives me thislook.”
He’s such an ass.
“You should have made them try to find it so they could understand your struggle,” Anya teases. Then suddenly, her smile becomes shy. “I’ve missed talking to you like this,Papochka.”
My heart gives a painful beat at her confession, and I dip my head in agreement. “I have as well,dochen’ka. It makes me so happy to know that you feel comfortable sharing more of yourself with me again. I’ve waited a long time to see you smile, and I have to begrudgingly admit that since the wedding, you’ve been doing so much more of it.”
“I feel more alive now,” she murmurs, looking down at her lap. “I think being around all those people was hard, and God, I don’t want to do it again any time soon…but I can see how it might have sparked something in me. A reminder that life goes on around me while I’m hiding from it, and that maybe I want to be done missing it.”
“Did being surrounded by so many people remind you of that, or was it meeting Matteo that did it?”
Her face going red should be the only answer I need, but she speaks up anyway.
“Matteo made me feel like a regular girl again, for only a few minutes, maybe even a few seconds. But it was eye-opening. I don’t think just meeting him once, and sharing a short dance would have done it alone, though. Bringing me the twins…it was the thing that really shocked me into the present.”
“You think?” I ask, surprised.
“They’re a year old,” she states softly. “It was so obvious how long they’d been living and growing. They weren’t tiny fragile newborns, but sturdy one-year-olds with blooming personalities and clearer emotions. And it was so evident to me how much of their lives I missed. It broke my heart, honestly.”
“They won’t remember that you were ever missing,” I tell her honestly. “They’re still very young. All of their memories from childhood that they keep will include you.”
“I’ll remember,” she says with a shake of her head. “I’ll remember that I never called Dmitri when they were born, or even texted him. I’ll remember that Cesar has Ivan’s name as his middle while his mother had never even met me. That to this day shestillhasn’t properly met me.”
“Do you want to change that?”
“Of course I do,” she answers immediately, almost snapping. “But I don’t know how to do that without making her feel like I’m putting her between me and Dmitri. Would she even want to talk to me if I don’t talk to him?”
“She would.” I don’t know her well, but I know her enough to know that.
“I—what?” Anya stutters. “Why do you say that?”
