I take the mug.
The coffee is the right strength, with the small amount of milk I’ve been adding since the pregnancy made black coffee sit badly in the mornings, and it’s still warm, which means he either timed it precisely or Irina has been keeping it warm for me. I stand at the counter and I wrap both hands around it and I look at the city through the kitchen window and I feel something move through my chest that I have been carefully not examining for weeks.
I drink the coffee.
I get dressed for my appointment.
The clinic is on the Upper East Side, and Viktor has me there in twelve minutes.
The receptionist greets me by name now, and the doctor comes out herself, which did not happen before the wedding, and I lie on the examination table, and the cold gel goes on my stomach, and the monitor comes to life, and there it is.
The heartbeat first. Fast and steady, filling the small room with a sound that still stops me every time I hear it, this specific evidence of something happening inside my body that I had no hand in starting and no power to stop.
Then the image.
A shape that is more recognizably itself than last time, small limbs and the curve of a spine, and the flutter of a heartbeat visible on the screen, and I lie there with my hands at my sides. I look at the screen, and I think, with total clarity and a completeness that surprises me, that Roman should be sitting in this chair.
He has never heard this heartbeat.
He has never seen this screen.
The doctor says everything looks good. I nod, and I get dressed, go back out through the lobby, and through the clinic doors, and I stop.
Aleksei is across the street.
He’s leaning against a black car with his coat on, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes on the clinic entrance. When he sees me, he straightens and crosses toward me, and I stand on the pavement. I don’t move because moving would give him something, and I’m not giving him anything.
He stops two feet away.
“You look well,” he says.
“Aleksei.”
“I heard you’ve been coming here on Tuesdays.” He glances at the clinic door and back at me, and the look he gives me is controlled and warm and makes my skin crawl. “How far along are you now?”
I look at him steadily. “What do you want?”
“I want you to be honest with yourself.” He puts his hands back in his pockets. “His world is going to consume everything around it. It always does. The men who work for him, the people who get close to him, they all end up paying for the proximity eventually.” He holds my gaze. “When that happens, and it will happen, I will still be here.”
I look at him for a long moment.
“Stay away from my appointments,” I say. “Stay away from my father’s house. Stay away from me.” I hold his gaze until he looks away first. “We are done.”
I walk to Viktor’s car, and I get in, and I close the door, and I don’t look back, and I wait until we have turned the corner before I let out the breath I’ve been holding.
“Viktor,” I say.
He meets my eyes in the rearview mirror.
“What happened outside stays between us.”
He looks back at the road. “Of course, Mrs. Petrov.”
Mara comes over at seven, and I make tea, and I tell her about the heartbeat and the shape on the screen, and she covers her mouth with both hands, and I let her have that before I tell her about Aleksei.
Her hands come down.
“Elena.”
