by Megan Hart
Jenni is so going to owe me.
After grabbing her robe, Alicia headed into the bathroom to take a shower. There was something else good about her sister not being there—Alicia got all the hot water. Her parents had been up for hours already. There was no fighting for the shower or the sink or the mirror. She took her time, soaping and conditioning and shaving her legs, until her mother pounded on the door with another command to hurry up or she’d be late.
Jennilynn was in bed when Alicia went back into the bedroom. There was nothing but a glimpse of pale-blonde hair peeking out from beneath the faded quilt made from blocks of fabric cut up from her old baby clothes and blankies. Alicia was supposed to have one, too, but her mother never got around to finishing it.
Alicia put her hands on her hips. “Hey. Get up. You’re going to be late for school.”
“I’m sick.”
“You’re not sick,” Alicia said. The sister pact was only about them against the adults. It didn’t count for them against each other. “You’re hungover.”
“Not.” Jennilynn didn’t so much as twitch back the covers. Her voice was husky and low.
She did sound like she might be sick, at least a little. Alicia tried to pull on the blanket, but Jennilynn had a death grip on it from underneath. They struggled for a few seconds before Alicia won.
“Shit,” Alicia said, stepping back at the sight of her sister. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing.” Jennilynn sat up, clutching the blankets to her chest.
Her hair was tangled, sections of it dark with dirt, like she hadn’t washed it in a few days. Bits of crumbled leaves were scattered throughout. Beneath the protection of her robe, Alicia shivered with a sudden, inexplicable chill.
“You look like crap,” she said. “What happened to you? Jenni, what happened to your neck?”
Dark bruises impressed her sister’s pale flesh. There was even a small but angry red scratch just below her chin. Jennilynn pulled the blankets up higher, hiding herself from view.
“It’s just a hickey or two.”
It didn’t look like a hickey at all. “Gross. Mom will kill you—”
At the words, Jennilynn let out a low, snorting laugh that cut off, strangled. “She won’t. Kill me. She wouldn’t actually kill me.”
Alicia grabbed clean panties and a bra from the dresser and slipped into them with her back turned, self-conscious in front of her sister, even though Jennilynn had no such issues with modesty and wouldn’t notice or care if Alicia did the hokey pokey buck naked right in front of her. Alicia pulled on a pair of jeans and one of her favorite T-shirts.
“It’s just a saying,” Alicia replied, trying to keep her voice down so their mother didn’t overhear. “And if she or Dad see those hickeys all over your neck, you’ll be in such bad trouble you’ll maybe wish they’d kill you, instead.”
“I would never wish to be dead.”
The words were so quiet, so bleakly bland and without any remnant of her sister’s usual sassy attitude that Alicia turned, certain she heard wrong. “What?”
“Nothing. Never mind. Forget it, you’re right, I’m hungover. Shit, maybe still drunk.” Jennilynn mumbled her answer, words slurring a little, and cut her gaze from Alicia’s. She dove beneath the blankets again. “Leave me alone now. Tell Mom I’m sick, please? She’ll believe you.”
Alicia was quiet for a second. Her own stomach began to hurt. “Where were you last night?”
“Out in the woods.”
“Yeah. I can tell. With who? A boyfriend?”
Last year, before Jennilynn and Ilya started up whatever it was they thought nobody knew they were doing, she’d gone out with Franco Dalton for a few months. It hadn’t lasted long. Before that, she’d dated Brad Kennedy, who went to a rival high school. There’d been others. Jennilynn’d had half a dozen boyfriends while Alicia was still waiting to have one.
She carefully didn’t let herself think about Nikolai. Or that party in October. Or the kiss. Definitely anything but that kiss.
Jennilynn was silent for a few seconds before letting out a giggle that finally sounded at least a little bit more like her usual self. “What if I was?”
“Since when do you have a boyfriend?” Alicia asked, deliberately casual, while she found a matching pair of knee socks in Jennilynn’s drawer. All of her own socks usually ended up there, anyway.
“I didn’t say he was a boyfriend.”
Alicia turned, socks in hand. “You’re out with him often enough, whoever it is. Just tell me, Jenni. Who is it? Is it someone I know?”
Jennilynn was silent beneath the blankets for a moment, before she mumbled. “Yes. You know him.”
“Ilya.”
“Who? What about Ilya?” Jennilynn flipped the blanket back just far enough to reveal one mascara-smeared eye.
“He’s your boyfriend?”
“Why? Did he say he was?” Jennilynn sounded weirdly . . . hopeful. She pulled the blanket back over her face. “Was he talking about me?”
“I haven’t asked him. I asked you.” With an eye on the clock, Alicia ran a comb through her hair, still damp from the shower. She had just enough time to swipe on some mascara and lip gloss and grab a toaster tart on the way out the door to the bus. She hesitated, though, staring hard at her sister, at the mysteries she was concealing beneath the cover of the comforter. “If it’s not Ilya . . . who is it?”
The only answer was a soft snore that had to be fake. If she went over to her sister’s bed and yanked off the quilt, that would force Jennilynn to get up. She’d have to go to school instead of getting to lie around all day watching TV. Alicia wanted to force her sister to stop lying about where she’d been and what she was doing, and with whom, but though Alicia wanted to do this, she couldn’t quite make herself. Because then she’d know, she thought as she left their bedroom with a click of the door behind her. And if she knew exactly what her sister had been up to, she wouldn’t be able to keep pretending that nothing was wrong with her.
“Jenni’s sick,” she told her mother, who was already wearing her coat and putting the lid on her travel coffee mug.
“Again?” For a moment, her mother looked concerned, the crease between her eyes deepening in a way that Alicia realized made her mother look . . . old.
“It’s her period, I think.” The lie slipped out easily enough.
Her mother wrinkled her nose. “Does she need anything?”
“She’s sleeping,” Alicia said. “I gave her some aspirin for the cramps.”
“Thanks, honey.” Her mother gave an absentminded look upward, as though she could see through the floors and into her daughters’ bedroom. “I’m going to be late for work, and I don’t have time to take you if you miss the bus. You’d better run.”
Alicia grabbed a toaster tart and allowed her mother to hurry her out the back door. She walked down the long lane toward the bus stop, where she could already see the Stern brothers and their still-newish stepsister waiting. Just once, she paused to look up to the window of her bedroom, but not even a shadow hinted at the sight of Jennilynn looking back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It felt good to be fixing something, to have a concrete task he could put his mind to and complete. Niko had always liked working with his hands for that reason. It took his mind off everything else that was going on.
Everything except Alicia, anyway, and since she was the main thing taking up all the room in his brain lately, he’d set out this morning to plan a day of tasks that would fill his time so he wouldn’t have to . . . what? Decide? Choose? And what had he done but go to see her—like that would help him forget the sound of her soft moans when he’d touched her.
“Yuck,” Niko muttered as he pressed the perpetually damp spot on the wall surrounding the tub. He poked a little harder, making a hole.
“It’s bad.” Galina said from the bathroom doorway. “But you can fix it?”
Niko shrugged, turning. “I’m not sure. I mean, ye
ah. I think so. I should be able to. The plumbing part of it, sure. The wall, I dunno. It’s going to depend on what kind of mess we’re looking at behind it. This might be a bigger job.”
Galina pursed her lips, studying the damage. “You can do it.”
“Nice that you have such faith in me, Mom,” Nikolai said with a grin.
“You’ll come through for me, Kolya.” His mother went to the sink and opened the medicine cabinet, then closed it with a creak. She smiled at him in her reflection. “This next. I’d like a nice mirror in here. Maybe a pedestal sink instead of this useless thing. New, fresh paint. We’ll get rid of the wallpaper.”
Niko brushed the crumbles of plaster dust off his hands. “Sure. We can do all that. Why not pull up the linoleum while we’re at it? See if there’s a real wood floor under here?”
“Ooh!” Galina clapped her hands and grinned at him. “Yes. That would be great. You can do that, too?”
He could, but that wasn’t so much the point he’d been trying to make. “Look, I know you want to get this place in better shape, and it certainly needs a bunch of work done to it, but . . . where are you getting the money for it?”
Money had always been a sensitive topic with her. He knew she’d often asked Ilya for loans she’d never paid back, or flat out asked his brother to cover her expenses. Ilya had bitched about it, but he’d done it. Galina had never come to Niko for money. She’d always relied on him for other things. Sometimes, he wished he’d been able to simply write her a check, instead.
“Don’t you worry about that. It’s my problem.” Galina shrugged. “And it’s not so much, is it? When you’re doing the work for me? If I had to pay someone, it would be much more.”
It would not have been the first time his mother had come up with some grand plan or scheme that she’d been unable to see all the way through. Not even the first time she’d put herself in debt chasing some crazy idea. One of the reasons Niko had gone so far from home, stayed away so long, was to distance himself from this very thing. The mania and the inevitable crash that came after.
“It’s a lot, that’s all. This house, it’s a big project.”
Galina laughed and shook her head. “It’s my house. My responsibility. Is it so wrong for me to want to make it nice for you boys? It’s all I have to give you, really.”
Niko frowned. “I don’t need you to give me anything.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to. I’m your mother, and I know I haven’t been the best one.” She studied him. “Besides, the more you have to do here, the longer you can stay.”
“If I can. I have some things coming up I won’t be able to get out of.”
That was a lie. He’d already started talking to the council about cashing out his contract. He wanted to stay here, and not so he could fix up his childhood home for his mother. He wanted to stay because the thought of leaving and not seeing Alicia again had woken him more than once in the night, his mouth dry and tasting sour, his heart pounding painfully. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do about that. He was still running, but not sure in which direction.
He did not want his mother to know this. Her decision not to go back to South Carolina wasn’t trustworthy. Unless maybe she knew he wasn’t leaving, but he absolutely didn’t want to be the reason Galina stayed.
She tilted her head to look him over. “Surely you can find work around here that won’t take you away.”
“You don’t understand how the kibbutz works. I signed a contract with them. It’s not so easy to simply walk away. “
“Really? You seem to walk away so easily from everything else.” Galina shook her head. “But I let you go because I thought it was important for you to have a chance to see the world, if you wanted to.”
All this time, and she so obviously was still telling herself some kind of fairy tale. Living in her own reality. Niko shook his head.
“You didn’t let me go, Mom. I just went.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Alicia had asked Theresa to meet her at a new coffee shop on the edge of town, where they each picked up a mug from the rack to take advantage of the “bottomless cup,” along with a couple of pastries. They took seats at one of the tables in the front window. The warmer-than-usual winter meant there’d been little snow, but there had been some ice. It was melting now, pattering like a mini waterfall down the glass, streaking it. Alicia liked this reminder that winter was on its way out.
“So,” Theresa said before Alicia could start the conversation, “I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”
Alicia sipped her coffee for a second. Too hot. She blew on it, then nodded. “A few, sure. Mostly like, how much of a coincidence is it that you’re the one assigned to this project?”
Theresa laughed and wrapped her hands around her mug. “Not much. The people I know with Diamond have been talking about acquiring a new property and expanding for a number of years. I was the one who suggested they look at the quarry.”
That wasn’t the answer Alicia had been expecting. “You were?”
“Yep. It’s the perfect spot. There’s nothing else like it in the area. With a new hotel and the proposed indoor water park, along with access to the water for swimming, boating, fishing—”
“Scuba diving?” Alicia asked.
“That, too. Of course. They’d be crazy not to take advantage of the work you and Ilya have already put into the spot. They’d want to expand it, of course. With some real money behind it, imagine what it could become.” Theresa pulled apart the brownie she’d ordered, then tucked one of the pieces in her mouth.
Alicia had ordered an apple pastry, but she didn’t much feel like eating it at the moment. She’d agreed to meet with Theresa to talk because the idea of selling the business had put other ideas into her head, but now faced with the reality of it, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to even consider it. “Ilya and I have put a lot of work into building our business. And money. Lots of it.”
Just about everything either of them had ever made, as a matter of fact.
“I know you have.” Theresa hesitated, looking as though she meant to say something, but didn’t.
“And?”
Theresa sat back in her chair, holding her mug in both hands. “Have you spoken to him about any of this?”
“About the offer? The plans? Not yet. With everything that happened lately, I haven’t had the chance. Ilya handles the classes and the trips. He’s the one who scouts out the new things to sink. He plans out that stuff. I’m the one who handles the numbers. I’m the one who keeps it all working.” Alicia cleared her throat, aware she’d gotten a little too loud for a public place. She softened her voice so she wouldn’t draw attention to herself.
Theresa nodded. “You’ll have to talk to him about it, though, of course. You can’t make a decision like this without him.”
Alicia focused on the coffee, sipping. She looked outside at the gray sky. The people passing by. She could not look at Theresa, who was one of the people who should’ve known exactly the reasons why she and Ilya could not—would not ever—sell the quarry.
“Of course not,” Alicia said finally. “I wanted to get more details about it before I talked to him. In case you hadn’t noticed, Ilya’s been having kind of a rough time with things.”
“Oh, I’ve noticed.” Theresa toyed with the crumbs of her brownie.
Something in her voice snagged Alicia’s attention, but nothing in the other woman’s expression gave a clue about what it might be.
Alicia sighed. “The truth is, we paid a lot of money for the quarry. Too much. We’ve put even more into it over the years, nearly every penny of what we’ve ever profited. All those things we sunk in it, the school bus, the helicopter. Those things weren’t cheap to acquire or to transport or to sink. We’re operating with a very, very low profit margin, Theresa. And this offer . . .”
This offer would open doors Alicia had always believed would be closed. Opportunities she’d never allowed herself
to imagine or consider. Getting out from under the debt, the work, her failed marriage . . . this life . . .
This life, the one you chose. Remember? You made your choices. You’ve lived with them.
She had lived with them, but did that mean she always had to?
Theresa leaned forward a little. “It’s a very generous offer, considering the property values and what they’d need to put into the site in order to upgrade it for the intended use. Allie . . . I know it’s a tough decision, and I wish I could give you all the time in the world to think about it, but I have to tell you that the clock is ticking on this one. They’re looking at a number of properties and options, so they want to move on this. This isn’t official, and I’m not supposed to know about it. But they’re talking about bringing the zoning board into it.”
Alicia had already had her share of battles with the zoning board over the years. “Ugh. Of course they are, right? Bully the little guy out of business?”
Theresa looked solemn. “I’m sorry. Believe me, I know how hard this decision has to be. So, please. Talk to Ilya about it. And get back to me, okay? I have to get back to work. But call me if you want to talk more. Or if you want me to talk to Ilya—”
“No, thanks. This has to be something I talk to him about.” Alicia pulled out her purse, frowning when Theresa waved her away. “No, I got this.”
“Thanks. I wasn’t expecting that, but thank you.” Theresa’s voice sounded rough, and she cleared her throat.
Alicia gave her a curious glance. “Everything okay?”
Theresa hesitated, then nodded. “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Just . . . well, it’s been good seeing you again. All of you, I mean, believe it or not.”
“Even Galina?”
Theresa laughed. “Yeah, even Galina. I have mostly fond memories of that time, to be honest. After my dad and Galina split up, things got . . . well, they weren’t so good.”
Alicia’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry.”