“I’ve just trauma dumped on you, Isolde. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“It’s okay.” I decide running my hand down her back is soothing.
She wipes her eyes. “It’s fine. It’s stupid. It’s. . .”
“Harder to get knocked up than you thought?”
“Exactly.” She laughs. “I wasn’t up to leaving the house, but I didn’t want to bounce off the walls. I’m sorry. I’m trying to use you, it’s just?—”
“You’re not using me.” I want to be the person my friends call when they need help. “But if I’d known, I could have brought some weed or something.”
She laughs again, the album in her lap bouncing.
“What is that?” I ask.
“Oh.” Russ looks down at it like she’s just remembered it. “You heard about Yelena and Lev?”
“How they’re getting a divorce.”
Russet’s had her ups and downs with her mother-in-law, so she keeps her face neutral. “She’s gone back to Russia. Her mom’s really sick. Lev went with her, but he shipped these back to me. There are literally no photos in their house from when she was younger, from when she lived in Russia. I thought I’d hang some up. Little reminders of her home.”
“That’s awfully nice of you.” The statement comes out sounding like a question.
She flips open the book. “She’s lived here almost thirty years, but I think she’s homesick. I don’t blame her.”
There’s a stack of albums on the coffee table, and I help myself to one.
“Oh, wow.”
“Isn’t it crazy?” Russet agrees. “She’s so young. And everything is so. . . Russian.”
The photos are grainy thanks to the technology. There are buildings with architectural styles I’ve never seen before. Old cars that are only spotted in movies now.
Russet’s not lying about how young Yelena is in some of the photos.
I blink at a skinny, blonde child in a dress. Next to her is a grinning man, his shoulders broad and his chest puffed out.
“That’s her dad,” Russ says. “She was really close to her parents.”
“Really?” Ren told me Yelena is a lot more protective of her boys than many think. She appears aloof and distant. She’s not like Jane Fujimori, working closely at the family business and knowing all her son’s friends. “And her mum’s not doing well?”
“No.” A shadow crosses Russ’s face. “I think. . . Who knows what will happen in the next coming days.”
“Rough, that.”
“Yeah,” Russ murmurs. “Look at this one.”
The trees signify forest and there’s a vacation feel to it. Yelena is wearing denim, her smile shy but light. Her hair streams around her shoulders. She’s older here than in any of the childhood photos. I’d guess late teenager, perhaps early adulthood.
“She looks like a model,” I admit. Fresh-faced, she’s beautiful. Her cheeks are naturally rosy. A stark difference from the blurred beige woman she’s beenlately.
“It’s weird to see vacation photos.” Russet flips to another page, still leaning into my side so I can see. “To see her doing normal stuff.”
I’m sure the Zimins took some posh family vacations, but I understand what she’s getting at.
“I don’t know why, but I love these photos. Would it be weird to frame these ones? I mean, I don’t need, like, a theme, right? Like a good photo is a good?—”
Russet’s voice fades, my heart skipping.
