Flashback - Archie
The estate looked unchanged when the car rolled through the gates, but grief alters architecture in ways stone cannot conceal.The air felt wrong.Too quiet, too staged.Like the whole place had been caught in the act of pretending.
No one met my eyes.
A maid nearly dropped the tray in her hands when she saw me.One of the older guards stepped aside so quickly his shoulder clipped the wall.Even the silence in the foyer felt curated, stretched too tightly over a darkness I could not adequately understand.
I found my mother first.
She stood in the great room with one hand braced against the mantel and the other wrapped around a handkerchief she had twisted into a ruin.When she turned at the sound of my steps, I almost didn’t recognize her.
I had seen her afraid.Many times, I had seen her bruised, quiet, empty.But I had never seen her look so distraught.
My pulse lurched.
“What is it?”
Her mouth opened, but no sound came.
Something inside me dropped.
It wasn’t him.If it were, she’d be breathing again—finally free of him.
Which meant…
There was only one other person in this world who could do this to her.The only one she loved just as much as she loved me.
My chest tightened, sharp and sudden, like something reaching in and closing its fist around my heart.
And before she said it… before I let her say it—I already knew.
I crossed the room in three strides.“Where is he?”
Her eyes flooded instantly.
“Archie—”
“Where is Rasputin?”
The handkerchief slipped from her fingers and fell soundlessly to the floor.
“He’s gone,” she whispered.
The room tilted.
It is strange, the mind in moments like that.How it will grasp for any interpretation but the right one.
Gone where?Gone how?Gone for how long?Gone in what sense?
Men in our world were always leaving.For meetings.For collections.For punishment.For funerals that would never be public.
But not like this.Not with the inconsolable face she wore.
“No,” I said.
She reached for me.I stepped back before I even knew I’d done it.
“No.”
