I put the phone down. I look at the study. The new boards. The old desk. The lamp, the chair, the bookshelves lined with volumes my grandfather collected and my father kept and I will keep because continuity matters, even in the small things. Especially in the small things.
In six days, I marry the woman who walked into a wreck to help people. In six days, Father Konstantin will stand at the altar at St. Elias and say the words that my parents heard in the same church thirty years ago, and Sadie will stand beside me in whatever dress she's chosen, which she won't let me see, thatPriya helped her find, which is hanging in the guest room closet in a bag I've been told not to open.
Dmitri knocks once and enters.
"The Calumet property," he says. "Demolition crew finishes today. The building will be leveled by tonight. No trace."
"The crew?"
"Ours. Pasha supervised."
"Good."
He sets a second folder on the desk. Thinner than the first. I open it.
"Final security plan for the wedding," he says. "Eight men on the perimeter. Four inside. Two on the street. I've swept the church twice this week and I'll sweep it again the morning of. Father Konstantin is aware and has cooperated without questions.
"Guests. The captains and their wives. Gregor, Yevgeny, and their families. Mikhail. Irina. On Sadie's side, Dr. Mehta and her wife, Priya, and Denise." He pauses. "No family."
"No."
The word sits between us. Dmitri knows about Sadie's parents. He knows there's no one to walk her down the aisle, no one to sit in the front pew and clap, no one to hold her bouquet while she says her vows.
"I'll be at the altar," I say. "You'll stand beside me."
"I know, I have an idea…it might not work out…"
He lays out his plan and I nod my ascent.
"And Dmitri,” I add as he gets up to leave. “Thank you." I say it simply. Without performance. The way my father said it to the men who earned it.
Dmitri looks at me for a long moment. His face does something I've seen maybe four times in our lifetime of working together, a softening around the eyes that he controls almost as quickly as it appears.
He straightens his jacket.
"I'm doing my job, Kol. That's all."
He leaves. The door closes.
Sadie
I stand with my hands on my hips and stare at the boxes. Only ten of them this time. The other four I had already unpacked and that stuff has either already been brought over, or I’ve not needed it.
The entire contents of my apartment were brought over by Lev and Dmitri in less than an hour while I waited here, because going back to that apartment was just something I couldn’t face.
I open the first one.Misc.is written on the side in black marker and my handwriting. It’s been so long since I packed them, I find myself wondering what I considered to be ‘misc.’ but important enough to drag across state lines.
I open the flaps and stuff from my childhood stares up at me. My baby blanket, soft and worn in places. A jewelry box that was a gift from my dad when I was six years old and making friendship bracelets to share amongst my friends. The little ballerina doesn’t spin anymore, but the music still plays in that fragile, tinny way.
At the bottom of the box, underneath school work and a few knick-knacks, lies a photo album.
It's cheap. One of those drugstore albums with the plastic sleeves and the peel-back pages, the kind that sticks and crinkles when you turn them. My mother started it when I was born and I took over when she got sick and I've been carrying itfrom apartment to apartment for years, the one thing I never left behind, the one thing Jason never touched because he didn't know it existed. I kept it in the back of my closet, behind the winter coats, wrapped in a pillowcase.
I sit on the bed and open it.
The first page. My parents on their wedding day. My father in a suit that's slightly too big in the shoulders, grinning at the camera. My mother in a dress she sewed herself, cream-colored, simple, her dark hair pinned up in a way that's already coming loose. They're standing on the steps of the courthouse, my father's hand on the small of her back, and she's leaning into him the way I lean into Nick, like instinct.
I touch the edge of the photograph. The plastic sleeve has yellowed. The colors have faded to that soft, warm palette that old photos develop, everything slightly golden, slightly unreal.
