Those two girls were gone. Anton, too. Oksana let them all go without noticing. And if that round-faced child killer she’d walked past flagged down Katya’s car at this moment, Oksana would not recognize him. Why should she? He looked just like anyone else in this ugly place. She never saw what was in front of her until it was too late.
The last time she spoke to Ryakhovsky was when the detective called to say they were winding down the investigation. “Oh,” she said. “Why? Are you sure?” That was when she still had the security of her fingers buried in the warm fur on her dog’s shoulders. Now she thought of calling back—not to ask for police help but to tell Ryakhovsky she understood.
She understood. There was no reason left for hope. Outside, buildings blurred against the night.
The day’s adrenaline had emptied away. Katya glanced at the rearview mirror as they entered Oksana’s neighborhood’s traffic circle. “It’s late,” Katya said. “Wherever Malysh is, he’s sleeping. It may be time for us to do the same.”
Katya turned onto Oksana’s street and slowed to navigate around potholes. Max said, “When you get home, you’ll probably find him curled up on your landing.”
Bottles, hubcaps, and first-floor windows turned into spots of white that could be, but never were, Oksana’s dog.
“Do you want us to stay over?” Katya asked.
“No,” Oksana said.
“Are you sure?”
Oksana’s dry face did not move. “I’m certain.”
The car bumped downhill in neutral. The phone in Oksana’s lap started to buzz. She flipped the phone over, glanced at the screen, and silenced it. Max, turned around in his seat, raised his eyebrows at the interruption. “Is that Anton? Still trying to call you?”
“Are you really in a position to be asking me questions?” Oksana said. “Because, believe me, while I’m looking for my dog’s body on the street, I’m thinking of many questions I’d like to ask you.”
“I’m only—” said Max.
“Don’t be cruel to him,” said Katya. Defending that idiot.
Oksana said, “I should be nicer?”
“You should understand he made a mistake. A terrible mistake. One he wishes he could take back.”
Oksana stared at the side of Katya’s face. “I understand perfectly.”
They rolled to a stop in front of Oksana’s building, left gap-toothed by its broken entrance. Oksana climbed out, shut the door behind her, and then opened it again. The car’s interior light illuminated Katya and Max, those awful dinner guests, those traitors. They waited for her to speak as though they expected her to invite them upstairs after all.
“Whatever was between us, it’s finished,” Oksana said. “Katya, don’t text me. Max, no more lunches.”
“Hold on,” Max said. “I did this, it was my fault. Don’t— Katya’s only here to help. Don’t act as though she hurt you.”
“Did you not hear me?” Oksana asked. “Could I say this more clearly?”
Max, mouth open, turned to Katya, whose knuckles were wrapped high on the steering wheel. He turned back. “Are you serious? I lose weekday lunch privileges, but she loses a fifteen-year friendship?”
“You would have never been in my house if it weren’t for her. I don’t want your kind of mistakes in my life anymore.”
“You know, you can be a real bitch,” Katya said. Her eyes were shadowed. Oksana scoffed. “Truly,” Katya said. “We came out tonight to help you. I know you’re upset, but if you would just look outside yourself, you would see that we’re here trying.”
“What fine help,” Oksana said. “Should I be grateful that your boyfriend murdered my dog?”
Katya shifted her car into gear. The engine got louder. “Malysh is probably upstairs. But you want to be alone, we’ll leave you alone. I can’t imagine how I hung around this long anyway.”
“I’ll be alone,” Oksana said. “You’ve both made sure of that. You’re right. Thank you.”
The apartment building’s stairwell was dark. The landing was empty. Oksana’s security door jutted forward.
She slipped inside her double doors and called, “Malysh?” He did not come.
Oksana pressed her hands to her chest, the phone hard against her ribs as punishment. One of her doors bent onto the landing and the other hung into her home. Outside them, the building slept. In her living room, fists pressed to skin, Oksana blamed herself. Sloppy. As deliberate as she had tried to be all these years, she was sloppy, and this was the consequence. She had closed her eyes to the world around her. Walked happily past a murderer of children. Put all of herself into an animal that ran…
If only Malysh had jumped that day on the mountain. Oksana should have thrown the stick for the dog herself. In August, in the very first few hours of police questioning, the missing girls’ mother had come to the station to talk to Oksana. Only now, months after that desperate conversation with her, did Oksana appreciate why. It hurts too much to break your own heart out of stupidity, to leave a door unlocked or a child untended and return to discover that whatever you value most has disappeared. No. You want to be intentional about the destruction. Be a witness. You want to watch how your life will shatter.
JUNE
A forest takes seventy years to recover after a fire. Out the car window, black streaked across the hills that guided Marina away from home. Limbless trunks rose from charred earth. In the front seats, Eva and Petya argued over the ending of an Australian horror movie. Eva was winning, speaking with more conviction; Petya kept falling silent as he navigated around potholes in the road. The next time he downshifted, Eva turned in her seat to make her case to Marina. “The end of it is a fantasy, like a dream sequence, don’t you agree?”
“I didn’t see the movie,” Marina said.
Eva pursed her lips. “From what you heard us describe, though. Doesn’t it seem most likely that it’s a fantasy?”
Marina shook her head. “I don’t know.” That familiar pressure began to come down on her chest.
Petya, bringing the car back up to speed, glanced at his wife. “She hasn’t seen it. Leave her alone.” Eva blew out her breath and muttered a word. “She’s fine,” Petya said. His eyes flicked up in the rearview mirror. Marina looked again toward the window. Above them, the sky was enormous, bloated with clouds. The long tracks of dead forest looked like thousands of bones pushed up from their graves.
The weight dropped hard on her chest. Marina could not breathe. She put her head back, folded her hands in her lap, and focused on shutting off the part of her mind that insisted on leading her toward panic. The path was simple: horror movies, petrified wood, bones. Graves. Murderers.
One hand came up to press on her sternum. Her heart hurt. If Marina could peel off her left breast, crack back her ribs, and grip that muscular organ to settle it, she would. She started having these attacks last August, after her daughters disappeared. A doctor gave her tablets to relieve the anxiety. Those did not help. No prescription brought her children home.
Marina was drowning in the backseat of her friends’ car. Pulling air in through her nose, she concentrated on benign knowledge instead. Seventy years for full regrowth. Where did she learn that? In childhood…her grandfather taught her, probably. Her family spent weekends at her grandparents’ dacha when she was a girl. He showed her the difference between common and creeping juniper, how to apply a lime wash to an orchard, and the best time to tap a birch for its juice.