“Anyway,” she says, “you know the anniversary of Nicki’s death was a few months ago. She hasn’t exactly had time to reflect or anything on that. Maybe her escape has something to do with that.”
“Hmm.” I watch her put away her papers, shoving them all in a manila envelope. “Any idea where she might go to reflect, as you say?”
She pauses and thinks for a moment. “There’s Mercer Department Store, maybe.”
“Mercer?” The abandoned building where I found her that day I took her to the mall. I’d forgotten that it was a department store around ten years ago.
She nods. “It was Nicki and Tati’s place to go to get away from everybody. You know, after it closed down. They used to go there and drink and break windows. Nicki used to say that it was cathartic.”
Oh. That suddenly makes a lot of things make more sense. “I did not know that.”
“Nobody did. Nicki only told me about it once we got serious. It was their place, so…” She shrugs as if to say,you understand.
I nod and thank her as I start to leave. “If you hear from her tonight…”
“I’ll call you.”
As I walk back out into the night, all I can think about is how upset she looked that day I found her at that old building. She’s in pain. Of course she is. I was a fool for not seeing it.
I seeher shadow well before my headlights shine on her. She’s sitting in the middle of the lot, her legs crisscrossed, her face turned up toward the ruins of what used to be a departmentstore. Like before, she doesn’t acknowledge my car and she doesn’t move once I’ve gotten out and started walking toward her.
“Tanechka.” I say it softly, but my voice still carries over the empty lot. She flinches a little at the nickname I gave her so long ago.
“Of course you’re here,” she says. “My father is so predictable.”
For the first time in recent memory, I’m at a loss for words. I know that my line in this particular scenario is to tell her that it’s time to go back home. Time for me to take her back to her cage. But honestly, I know the loss that plagues her. I know it well enough to understand why she keeps coming back here.
“So, this is where you take me back, right?” she says, half turning so I see her profile. “Sucks to be you right now because I’m not going anywhere. Not with you. Not with anyone.”
I sigh and look up at the looming modern castle above us. “Marla told me that you and Nicki used to come here.”
“Did she?” She scoffs. “Well, isn’t she chatty tonight. She tell you anything else?”
“Only that the two of you used to break these windows out together. That it was cathartic.”
She nods slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what we used to do. What she probably doesn’t know is that Nicki and I used to talk here. About things that we couldn’t tell anyone else. Not in the whole world. He was the last person alive that I could really confide in, and now he’s gone. Seven years in the fucking ground…”
Her voice starts to crack and she stops herself. In the dim light I see the shine of her eyes as tears well up in them. I kneel down next to her. “Tati, I’m sorry?—”
“Do you know your fearless leader wouldn’t even let me mourn him properly?” she says, looking directly at me in the darkness. “After the funeral, he told me that I was allowed to cry about it that day, but by tomorrow, I had to get myself together and be a ‘paragon’ of strength. The family name was at stake, he said.” She shakes her head as tears roll down her face. “Such bullshit.”
“He just wanted you to be strong, Tati.”
“He wanted me not to embarrass him in front of the troops. I mean, honestly, how psychotic is that? My brother just died.” She sniffles and wipes her eyes with her sleeve. “At the hospital when they were working on him, they told my father that there was a good chance that he would be on life support. My father told them if that happens to just…” She trails off and shakes her head, the words caught in her throat. “He let Nicki die, Viktor.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I know that Nicki wouldn’t have wanted to be kept alive on machines. I imagine his father knew that too. It was a kindness to let him die with dignity.
“And I get this whole thing about the brotherhood,” she continues, “and being a bunch of big, strong, virile, able-bodied men… but I’m not part of that. Not really. I should have been allowed to… to cry.”
She sobs, and I want to wrap my arms around her. I go to do so and she flinches away from me. “No. Don’t. Please.” She sniffles and gets up, walking away from me.
“Tati, stop.”
She does. She stands with her back to me, hands on her hips, looking up at the sky. After a few moments, she asks, “Were you drunk the night he died?”
“What?”
“You never answered me, and I need to know if you were drunk the night he died.” She turns around to me, her face wet with tears. “You both were in the car when it crashed and the police report said that he was drunk. You were his mentor, Viktor. It wouldn’t make sense for you to have been sober if he was drunk. I know that you would never have let him drive. I know you wouldn’t have.”
