I could examine and re-examine every inch of the property, looking for more signs of intruders, of weaknesses, of gaps in my castle walls. But why bother?
I don't give a fuck if they come for me. Either they'll die or I will, and either way, my problems would be over. Plus, I know that Caroline is now safe. I left her at the foot of the mountain, where normal people live normal lives, not up here on this snow-blasted rock face, where there's no telling what might happen next. What demons might rise up and come lurking.
Grimacing, I stomp out of the kitchen and into the bedroom.
The bedspread is unmade. She left the quilt thrown back, the pillow still dented where her head was. Her scent lingers under the woodsmoke, so jarringly wrong that my nose wrinkles up. It doesn't belong here. Too feminine and dainty, too sweet and floral. Nothing about her belongs here, which is exactly what I told her. I was right.
I drop on the edge of the bed and sigh.
The photograph is where she said it was—under the book on the nightstand, its corner peeking out. I pull it free and hold it in both hands.
Gervasii's arm slung around my shoulder. Yelena laughing at something. I don't remember what. Some joke Gervasii made, probably. He was always the funny one. The one people wanted at their table. He could walk into a room full of strangers and leave with a story he'd tell for years. I was always the quiet shadow behind him.
I didn't mind, because being in his orbit meant being warm, and I'd been cold for so long before that I didn't even know I was freezing until he showed me what heat felt like.
The restaurant behind us was Yelena's favorite. A Georgian place on Brighton Beach Avenue with clay pots of lobio and khachapuri the size of your head. The owner knew us by name. We went every Sunday after church—back when we still went to church. That, of course, was before I stopped believing in anything that required kneeling.
My thumb traces the edge of the photograph. The crease down the middle runs right between Gervasii and me, bisecting the image neatly. Him on one side. Me on the other. Yelena caught in between.
That crease wasn't there when the photo was taken. It came later, from being folded and unfolded in shirt pockets and nightstand drawers across a dozen apartments and safe houses and, finally, this cabin—the last stop on a very long road that leads nowhere.
Wolf has wandered in. He's standing in the doorway and watching me carefully, one eyebrow lofted. He has very expressive facial expressions for an animal with no capacity for higher reasoning, though Caroline would probably argue that he's got more emotional intelligence than I do. She might not be wrong.
"I was wrong, wasn't I?" I ask him. "I shouldn't have reacted that way."
Wolf's tail thumps once against the floorboards. Agreement, or a muscle spasm. With him, it's hard to tell.
I set the photograph on my knee and look at it for a long time. We were so fucking young back then. And so stupidly happy that the camera managed to catch me smiling before I remembered all the reasons I had to frown.
"But she had to go. It wasn't safe here for her."
He whacks the floor with his tail again in response.
"Don't give me that shit. She's Bill's daughter. Do you understand what that means?"
He doesn't, of course. He's a dog. But he must understandsomeaspect of it, because he waddles closer and rests his huge head on my lap. His eyes are wide, dark, liquid, and unblinking as he gazes up at me.
"There's too much shit there to unpack. It's for the best that this is how it went. Let her go scurrying back to a life that makes sense to her, because the devil knows mine stopped making sense to me a long fucking time ago."
The thing is, I made her a promise. And for all my many sins, breaking vows isn't one of them.
But hardly any time at all passed between the promise and me hurling her out my door like I was a bouncer 86'ing her from a bar.
Like he can hear what I'm thinking, Wolf's ear twitches.
It wouldn't be hard to stay here. The silence doesn't bother me, and the judgmental dog is easily ignored. I have lots of practice in ignoring my mistakes, too. Give it a year and I'd be fine. If you gave me five, I'd barely even remember the nameOglethorpe.I'm good at this shit. Silence and avoidance are the only two skills I ever truly mastered.
But Bill didn't send her that letter so she could sit in the dark forever.
"He wanted her to know," I say. "That's why he wrote it. And he trusted me to fill in the rest, because I'm the only bastard left who can."
Wolf lifts his head off my knee and stares at me. His brow furrows into those deep Rottweiler wrinkles.
My gaze falls again to the photograph. I look at Yelena this time. If she was here, she'd be laughing in my face.You stubborn fucking goat,she'd say.Hiding in the mountains just makes you vertically superior, not morally.She did always have a way with words.
The least your dumb ass can do is give the girl what her old man wanted her to have.
I set the photograph back on the nightstand, face up this time. No more hiding it under books like contraband.
