Instead, she sat down beside me.
“You’ll get dirty,” I warned her. “We haven’t swept in… Well, ever.”
“I don’t care.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Let’s hang out.”
“It’s not a good time.”
“Hmm. How much of that have you had?” she asked, tilting her head in the direction of the bottle.
It was half-empty. “I don’t know.”
“Given it was full when I saw it in your freezer on Friday, and the fact that you were gone for the weekend, I assume you’re responsible for the damage.” She reached over to pry it out of my grasp. I didn’t fight her. She’d be gone soon enough anyway, and even if she took the vodka with her, I’m sure I’d find something else at the house.
A green cricket hopped across the grass, pausing for a second before continuing his journey, and a gust of wind sent a fragrant scent my way. In the corner of the backyard was a small patch of some sort of wild flower with orange petals and brown centers. I pointed them out to Molly.
“Black-eyed Susan,” she said. “We had them growing in my childhood home as well. Did your family have a garden when you were a kid?”
I shook my head. “We lived in an apartment building. My grandpa owned a dacha outside the city—”
“What’s a dacha?”
“A cottage. That’s what we call them in Russia. Anyway, when he died, no one took care of it for many years. I think my mama sold it at some point.”
Her bare thigh brushed against my own. “You never talk about your family.”
A bitter laugh spilled out of my throat. “We work, and we fuck. We don’t talk much about anything.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe we should. I’d like to know more about you.”
“No, you don’t,” I said harshly. “You just want to know what’s going on with me today.”
“Can’t it be both?”
I exhaled and ran my hands down the sides of my face. “It’s my mama’s birthday, okay? We don’t have a good relationship. I do my best not to talk or even think about her all year, but I make an exception on this day.”
“I get it. I do the same thing on the day of my parents’ death.”
I gave her a weary look. “What happened to them?”
“Drunk driver,” she said, looking out at the backyard. “I was fifteen.”
“You got along with them?”
She smiled sadly. “Yeah. I loved them very much. But I discovered a long time ago that if I let myself think about them for too long, it takes me to a bad place. So I give myself one day a year to do it and try to forget for the rest.”
“You also finish off half a bottle of vodka on that day?”
This made her laugh. “Tried once with rum. Only made me feel worse.”
“You learned a lesson I’ve never seemed to absorb.”
Her palm warmed my shoulder. “Let me get you some water.”
“I haven’t talked to her in three years.” Molly stilled just as she was about to get up. “Our relationship is so damaged that I don’t think I’d miss her even if she were dead.” I met her gaze, daring her to show her outrage, her disappointment, but it never came.
She squeezed my flesh in a comforting gesture. “I’m sure you have a good reason.”
“I was her biggest mistake.” She’d said that to me once when I was only six or seven, but a sentiment like that was something you didn’t forget. “I nearly ruined her marriage. The marriage that dragged her out of poverty, a place she never wanted to visit again.” My mama lived most of her youth one inconsistent paycheck to the next, working at the local market, selling produce. She hated that place. Hated the smell of raw meat that stuck to her clothes every single day. Marrying Mikhail had been her ticket to a better life, and every time I’d fight with him as a teenager, she’d yell at me to stop.“Ti hochesh meniya poslat obratno v eto uzhastnoye mesto, ti neblagarodniy d’yavol?”Do you want to send me back to that wretched place, you ungrateful devil?
