“What are they?”
“Books. I stole them when I left. From your father. They are…” She makes me take them from her. “They are valuable, I think. Business ledgers. Maybe they can help you. I don’t know, but you should have them.”
“Why? I don’t need these.”
“I was angry at him when I left. I wanted to get revenge. He kept these locked in a safe and I stole them, and now…” She trails off, maybe realizing how stupid this is. “Take them. I’m sorry, Veronika. I really am.”
I hold the ledgers against my chest and frown at my mother. I try to find some words to express how I’m feeling. Some phrasethat can draw a line under this relationship and end it for good.You don’t deserve happiness.I hate you. I love you. I wish you were my mother.But nothing feels right. I turn and start to walk away.
“Is it really true? Is he really dead?” The hope in her voice kills me.
“You’ll be fine now, Klara. Don’t worry anymore.”
She nods, hugging herself. I glance back one last time before walking swiftly to where Gabe’s waiting.
He doesn’t say anything. I keep moving and he falls into step, draping an arm across my shoulders and tugging me close. I hold it together until we reach the train station and find a secluded bend, and I break, the emotion flooding from me like a shattered dam, and he holds me tight as it drowns me over and over again.
CHAPTER 30
NIKA
The French countryside spreads out around me like weeds. I walk through the forest, pausing to brush my fingers over old growth trees, listening to birds and squirrels and breathing deep the crisp air.
I try not to think about my mother somewhere in Germany living her life without me.
Do I wish that meeting had gone differently? Do I wish she had dropped to her knees and begged my forgiveness, or that she’d been living a miserable existence without me, always pining to see her lost daughter one day? It feels wrong to want that sort of unhappiness, like she should suffer for the terrible choices she’d made when she was young.
And they were terrible choices. She ran away and left me behind because she was scared. She knew my father wouldn’t chase her if she wasn’t valuable anymore, and taking me away was out of the question. She knew, and she still disappeared anyway.
I should hate her for that, but it’s hard to hate much of anything on a day like this.
I find an old stone wall near the farmhouse and sit against it. The crumbling foundation rolls along the hills for another half mile before it stops. I wonder what the old owners of this land were trying to keep out, or more likely were trying to keep in. Cattle, goats, sheep, that sort of thing. Entire lives came and passed in this grass, and now here I am, breathing the same air. I smile to myself and flip open the little black ledger.
My father’s handwriting is terrible. It’s complete shit. He scribbled at best, scrawled in an unreadable cipher at worst. Half is in English, the other half in Russian, which I only partially understand. I can’t speak it but Aunt Yelena made sure I could at least read some of it. There were hours of old Russian storybooks, practically slaving over them as she made sure I struggled my way through them.Making you stronger, little one, I promise.Now a part of me is glad for those lessons.
It’s strange, learning about my father from these books.
He was always a mythical presence in my life. Less a human, more a force. His whims changed everything, like some strange vengeful God hiding in the heavens, watching, judging, hating everything I did. He’d send his emissaries and my world would shrink further and further, until by the end of it I was a speck in the dirt.
He was vain. Always worried about how he looked. Most of the journals are his thoughts on the businesses—never good enough—but some of it touches on his personal life. Helena’s name appears more than a few times. He never writes anything nice. She was probably right to get away.
There’s a crunch of twigs nearby. I look up as Gabe hikes toward me. He’s in jeans, a light gray button-down, the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His boots are brown and worn, his hair messy andwindblown. I’m struck at how handsome he is all over again as he strides to me. There’s never any hesitation in him, which I love, the way he simply walks up to what he wants and takes it like there’s nothing wrong with how he feels. He stoops down and kisses me, lingering for a beat, before sitting on the wall beside me.
“How’s the old man today?” he asks, gesturing at the book.
I shrug and toss it aside. “He was such a bastard. Even in private he was a piece of shit. I’m truly astounded.”
“Nobody misses him.”
“And my mother’s not much better. I’m fucked, right? Coming from those two?”
“Not in the slightest.” He hauls me up beside him and wraps an arm around my shoulders. “You aren’t your parents. You have some of them in you, but you’re still you.”
“I don’t know. Feels like I’m starting the race in last.”
“And yet here you are, ending up with me.”
“Are you trying to say you’re some kind of prize?”
