Petya winced. “That’s worse.”
“Yes,” she said. “Remember that.”
He nodded once and followed Lev out.
My father was next. The doctor appeared as soon as Galina opened the door, which told me she’d been holding the man back by force of will and social terror.
Mikhail’s jaw tightened. “I can walk to the car.”
Galina turned her head. “Mikhail.”
He looked at her.
She didn’t repeat herself.
His hand closed around the cane. “Fine.”
The doctor stepped in beside him.
Before my father left, he gripped my forearm.
His hand felt lighter than it should have.
“You chose trouble,” he said.
“I learned from you.”
“You chose better trouble than I did.”
That was as close as Mikhail Sorin would come to blessing anything while sober and in pain.
He looked at Nadia. “Welcome to a difficult family.”
Nadia’s expression eased. “I’ve had practice.”
He nodded, accepting that answer as tribute.
Galina touched Nadia’s cheek before she left. Not long. Not sentimental. Just two fingers, cool and steady, against the place Gennady had tried to turn into shame.
“My son is not easy,” Galina said.
“I know.”
“Easy men are rarely useful.” Galina kissed my cheek, then fixed me with the same stare that had ended wars at my father’s dinner table. “Do not let him stand again tonight, Vadim.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Do better than that.”
“Yes, Mother.”
She left with my father and the doctor.
At last, only Nadia and I remained.
The room looked worse in the quiet. Blood marked the table. A crack split the plaster. Gennady’s rings sat in the dish near the samovar. Chairs stood pushed back from the table. One of Nadia’s fingerprints marked the polished wood where her hand had pressed hard enough to leave a faint oval in dust.
I took a clean handkerchief from inside my jacket and wiped the blood from my knuckles.
