Like forgiving myself—that's unusual, too. Caroline said a long time ago that she forgave me for being her father's entry point into the underworld that eventually claimed his life. She's just been waiting on me to let it go.
"It's good," I say again. Then, because it's Gervasii's son sitting across from me and I know damn well that Matvei won't let me get away with another half-assed answer, I add, "I didn't think I'd ever get this. Any of it. I thought I had my year, a long time ago, and that was the whole allotment. I made my peace with that. Or I told myself I did."
Matvei nods and gestures for me to say more.
"And then she walked out of the trees," I say. "And ruined the whole plan."
He shrugs. "I think we've both learned that plans are overrated."
"I've given up on them," I agree. "I'm plan-sober now."
We both chuckle. "Cass insists Caroline's the only one of us who could've gotten you to take that ring off," Matvei says. "Says you'd have worn it into the ground otherwise."
She's not wrong about that. I wore that thing for twenty years, because I thought taking it off would mean I was leaving her behind, putting her in the dirt a second time.
But that's the thing I didn't understand for the longest time, because I'm slow about anything that lives in the chest. Caroline didn't ask me to bury Yelena. She only asked me to let her in—into the grief, into the part of me that screamed in the night. She didn't want me to wall it off and hand her some clean, empty, incomplete version of a man.
She wanted therealone. Ghosts and all.
So I took the ring off. Not because I was done with Yelena. Because I was done being a man who carried his dead alone.
"Caroline didn't get me to take it off," I explain to Matvei. "She got me to understand I didn't have to take it off to let her in. So I did both. Took it off,andlet her in." I twist the gold band around my scarred finger. "The grief's still there. It always will be. But it's not a door I keep locked anymore."
Matvei nods again, thoughtful and observant. Then he says, "My dad would've liked her."
The gut punch of emotion that follows that surprises me. I have to look back out the window for a second.
"Yeah," I say. "He would've. She talks too much and she never does what she's told. She'd have driven him crazy." I clear my throat. "He'd have loved her."
"Definitely. Stupid, brave idiots flock together." He follows my gaze out the window and sighs. "You ever think about him?" Matvei asks. "Dad?"
"Every day," I say truthfully.
"Me, too." He sips his coffee and pulls a sour face. "Less, now. That's the part that gets me. It used to be all the time, every minute. Now, though, it's a little less claustrophobic. Like he moved off a little ways."
"He didn't move," I say. "You did. You went and built a life. That's what he wanted."
Matvei nods slowly. He doesn't trust his voice for a second; I can see it. We're the same that way. Two men who'd rather take a beating than say the sappy shit out loud.
We sit in the silence as the sounds of the cafe bubble around us. The card game in the back, the clack of dominoes, an old man saying something in Russian and another one wheezing a laugh. The door opens, lets in the cold and the smell of salt, closes again.
"Anyway," Matvei says, shaking it off. "Cass wants to do a dinner. All of us. You, Caroline, the dog?—"
"Wolf's not coming to a dinner."
"Cass says the dog's coming. She usually wins."
"Dammit," I growl, because he's right about that. He married a stubborn one. Then again, so did I.
The bell over the door rings again. I don't pay it any mind at first. People come and go. But then I feel that old prickle on the back of my neck, the one that kept me alive for thirty years and never quite shuts off. I look up.
Alexei Ivanov is standing inside the door.
He's the same as he always is. Sharp face, clever eyes, the lithe build of a man who's never been caught because he's never stopped moving. But there's something off. I've known Alexei a long time. I know what he looks like when he's working an angle and what he looks like when he's between jobs and what he looks like when he's tired.
This is none of those. This is something I've maybe seen on him once, twenty years ago, and never since.
He'sspooked.
