“You did?” Stefan asked.
Gabe nodded.
“What’ll you do? Travel?” Buy a castle and play lord of the manor? Stefan thought, but didn’t say.
But this brother he thought he knew inside out had some surprises in him still. “He’s been working with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for a long time,” Alex said. “He quit to work there full-time.”
“One thing I’m good at,” Gabe said. “Squeezing money out of people. I don’t want any more kids to die and never live to see a day like today.” He picked up a rock and threw it toward a tree. “And I’ll have more for you rich boys on that topic later, when our ship comes in.”
“Gabe, wow. Count me in.” Stef forgave him everything in that instant, every bad thing he ever did. So what if Mom liked him best? Maybe he deserved it.
“Papa would be so proud,” Alex said.
“I sometimes think I remember. His mustache tickled,” Stefan said, rubbing a finger along the letters on his father’s headstone.
“I remember his growl,” Gabe said.
“I’m sure he was happy to have two more sons,” Alex said, “but Christina exerted such influence over everyone, including Papa. She never listened to anyone except him, and he listened to her, and was her hero.” He sighed. “I regret you’ll never know them, and maybe come to forgive them both.”
“What was Christina-our sister-like?” Stefan asked.
And Alex, unleashed, filled them with stories about their childhood, stories that showed a younger brother’s admiration for his smart, dreamy older sister. “She loved the story of the snow maiden. I often think it was because she felt an affinity for this character who went all the way, in spite of the danger she certainly saw coming, who wore that mark of being special, and who died because she couldn’t settle down and accept a smaller, happy life.”
They threw dirt on their father’s final resting place. They had cremated the last bones, and burned the DNA results. Only ashes lay in the grave now.
Christina’s grave was next to her father’s and mother’s. Stefan left her a bundle of bright fall leaves and flowers. Gabe contributed irises. Alex put down one yellow rose.
“Our big sister.” Gabe ran the sounds around in his mouth. “Well, she would appreciate a good toast. I know she could throw a glass.” He reached behind himself, bent, and brought out a bottle of vodka and three small glasses. “To our Christina,” he said, “almost tsar of all the Russias.”
“Za nashu sestru,” said Alex, raising his glass. “To you.”
31
Friday 10/3
PAUL ASKED NINA TO GO DANCING. THERE WEREN’T TOO MANY places to dance, but he found one in a hotel with a band and a wooden dance floor. He wanted her to come, so she did.
The dancing, mindless, absorbing, physical, was about as perfect as it could be. Sweat flew off his forehead, and she stomped until her knees hurt and her clothes stuck to her body. The music carried them along, and the evening, had it been a first date, would have been perfect.
Except it was a last date.
Exhausted, ready for a little champagne and bruschetta, they collapsed at a table beside the action. Paul toasted her: “An amazing, courageous, crazy, sexy, cool woman. A winner.”
And she toasted him as her love.
The waiter poured them second glasses, but Nina was thirsty, and drank ice water from a cold, slick glass instead.
Paul downed his champagne, head tipped back, hair too long, neck of the thousand kisses exposed. He was watching the dance floor, flashing lights flicking color on the writhing bodies, and Nina could see how responsive he was to the movement, to the raw physical power out there.
“Paul, we need to talk.”
“Damn. And things were going so well,” he said with a smile.
She took the ring off and put it gently in his hand, where it lay looking sad, unwanted.
“So, this is the answer I waited for so long to hear,” he said slowly. “Mama always said you should be careful what you wish for.” He turned the ring over a few times. “You heard about Susan, didn’t you?”
“I don’t want to talk about her.”
“I should have said something at the time, but you were involved in that trial.”
“Please, let’s not get distracted.”
“That’s what she was, a distraction.” He took her hand. “If anything, she put my head back on straight, made me understand that I’d do anything to have things right with you, Nina.”
She couldn’t resist engaging. “And anything includes sleeping around?”
“It wasn’t like that at all.”
“I didn’t want to get into this with you, Paul. She is not the problem. We are the problem.”
“I thought you were a big girl. I thought you would understand. You hurt me, Nina.”
“I know. I should never have accepted your ring and then strung you along like that. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I’m sorrier.” He drank some water. “I want to ask why, then.”
She didn’t want to get into explanations. They were always self-serving, and they never explained, but she wasn’t ready to go the next step, either. She needed time to stop shaking, and get her heart beating right. “This case…”
Plainly, he expected something different, because he interrupted impatiently, “Talk about a distraction.”
“See, I don’t see my work that way. It doesn’t interfere with living. It doesn’t fit in between other things. It is my life.”
He took a breath as if to steady himself, and asked, “Okay, what about the case?”
“It was all about a woman who found her way. Christina finally found her place-it was crazy, maybe, but she felt right. She felt useful.”
“Okay, so this is relevant how?”
He was trying to stifle his impatience, but she heard it in the brusqueness of his words. It firmed her resolve. She was doing the right thing.
“When you offered me that fantastic ring,” she said, “I wanted it so much, I took it. But I shouldn’t have. These past few weeks, I’ve admired it so many times. It’s so balanced and graceful. I wish I could live up to it. But I’m not balanced. I’m driven and obsessed and sometimes I sleep better alone. I have a place where I belong already, and it isn’t as your wife.” She didn’t want to watch him take it all in, so she watched the people on the dance floor dip and spin. “I hate this. I’m not graceful, either.”
He broke off a piece of bruschetta and ate it. “I really hoped the ring would clinch it. I thought we needed the ring, both of us. It was a mistake. Another one among several I’ve made with you, lately.”
She didn’t want to ask but she wanted to know for sure. “You slept with her, didn’t you?”
He nodded.
Nina tried to speak again quickly, to keep up the pace, but she felt a rock lodged in her throat. She worked to clear it, but nothing came out. Garth Brooks was singing about being sad and in pain, but how he still would have done the dance no matter what.
“Nina, I’m a proud man.”
She couldn’t trust her voice yet, so she nodded.
“On the whole, I like myself. You love me, but sometimes you don’t like me. I get no respect, and honey, I deserve it. Remember how, when you met Collier, you married him a minute later?”
Her “yes” came out like a croak.
“Well, I was there before him and I was there after him, but I never managed to swoop down and fly away with you like he did. I guess I figured out what was really going on with us when you wouldn’t answer a really simple question a few weeks ago. But you’ve danced with me, yeah, and you’re a really fine dancer.” He took her hand. “You are graceful.”
“I am?”
“Even in those impractical shoes you wear. Nina, I love you.”