—Polina Chernyavsky, age 17
It was very, very quiet.
Ice chips floated in cold rivers through Ruby’s veins. Cece sat unmoving beside her. Even Lili’s freckles had turned pale.
Vera slapped the Recordings shut with a slight puff of dust. She seemed lost, as if when she’d opened the book she’d been sitting in a clearing, and now she’d looked up to find herself deep in the woods. They all might as well be.
Polina had lived to ninety-five. She’d died alone, in this house, without children. She might have raised Ruby’s mother and Aunt Annie, might have loved them . . . but not the kind of love she’d described in the Recordings.
Their visions were never wrong. They never had been. This was the gift the Chernyavskys had taken with them. It was all they had left; that, and each other.
Ruby looked to her mother—for what, she wasn’t sure—but Evelina still had not lifted her eyes from the floor.
Amid the hiss of whispered questions, Vera cradled the Recordings and stood. She waited until the room quieted, then said with only a small tremble in a voice strong enough to be heard from the back of the crowd, “You all know our story, my sisters and I. You know where we come from, and why my mother sent us away when I was too young to truly remember her. As the oldest, Polina watched over Galina and me on our long journey, and made us a home in this new country. She reminded us all the while that we were alive only because we had left behind our most perilous knowledge. Never again would we be hunted by those who desired it, for we did not possess the prize they sought.
“But if my beloved sister indeed brought my mother’s secrets with her across that vast, cold ocean . . . If in her wisdom, she has kept them in silence all this time so that we might remain safe . . .” Vera gritted her teeth, then ground out, “then may they die at last, and be thankful that in her wisdom, she shared them with no one.”
With that, she clapped the book closed and left the room without delivering the traditional toast. No tiny glasses of slivovitz were lifted in Polina’s name, as they had been at Alyona’s Reading. When it became clear that Vera would not return, the aunts and cousins began to drift away. One by one they climbed into their cars and vanished into the night. Aunt Annie fled with Cece almost at once.
If she had spoken to her sister before leaving, Ruby hadn’t seen it.
Escaping the nervous buzz of the lingering women—they were like black bees in a threatened hive—Ruby snuck upstairs to sit with her thoughts for just a moment. Polina’s bedroom was the first at the top of the stairs, and she placed her hands against the cold, heavy door that listed on its hinges, intending to push. But then she saw the slice of light below the dark wood and, when she held her ear to the door, heard the sobbing. It was quiet and compressed, as though muffled by a pillow. She backed away, leaving Great-Aunt Vera in peace.
Instead, she turned to the door opposite Polina’s. It was her mother and Aunt Annie’s childhood bedroom, and it was nothing she hadn’t seen before when she slipped inside. Two antique-looking sleigh beds with curling headboards and footboards pushed against the worn, pale red wallpaper. There were no stuffed animals on the bench seat, or yellowed pictures or posters on the walls. It was just a spare room now.
Leaving the light off so she wouldn’t be discovered, Ruby made her way by the moonlight through the drawn curtains and settled onto the floor between the beds.
She didn’t mind the dark. She hadn’t since she was ten years old.
There was a farm in Saltville that used to put on a haunted house and corn maze each Halloween. Ruby’s mother took their family every year, until her sisters were too old. Then it was just the two of them. They’d gone for the last time the year she turned ten. In the apple orchard, they ran a haunted hayride that kids under ten weren’t allowed on, so Ruby remembered standing in line for the very first time, and feeling her heartbeat in her ears. She remembered it beating, small and scared, but very alive. She had been waiting years, and she was ready.
But when the moment came to board the wagon hitched behind the tractor, she had frozen. Until, that is, her mother climbed the metal steps and stood in the hay. Her face glowed white under the stadium lights, hair rippling down under her yellow pom-pom winter hat. She held her hand out to Ruby, and a strange fire lit her eyes from behind. “Don’t be afraid, baby. We’re Chernyavsky women. The dark is scared of us.”
Ruby breathed through the memory as if through chest pain.
That was when the bedroom light clicked on overhead, and she blinked up at the figure in the doorway as her eyes readjusted.
“Oh, zerkal’tse. I was hoping that was you.”
Even from across the room, her mother still smelled like mint. Ruby thought she would hold a hand out to help her up from the floor, but Evelina stayed almost inhumanly still.
“It’s wonderful to see you,” she continued, voice rough. “You look . . . you’re beautiful.”
Ruby held just as still as her mother, not trusting her own voice.
“Quite the Reading, wasn’t it?” she continued. “And I guess I didn’t help things. I suppose you weren’t expecting me. But I—I felt the cold, and was sure it was Polina, and I knew it was time to come home.”
Now, when Ruby spoke, she heard only disdain, thick as honey on a teaspoon. “You didn’t have to. You weren’t missed.”
The fine lines around her mother’s river-green eyes pulled tight. “I don’t blame you for that. And I know this will be hard to believe, but I’ve always loved you, Ruby. I’ve always tried to protect you. It’s why I left.”
Years ago, when she’d still allowed herself to imagine her mother returning, Evelina would always give a speech just like this. And in her imagination, Ruby would launch herself forward, smash her face into her mother’s sweater.
Instead, she stared at the toes of her mother’s boots and tried to feel hatred. Mostly, she felt tired.
She stood, brushing dust from the seat of her dress as if that were her greatest concern. “I have to go home now.”
“Zerkal’tse—”
“Stop calling me that. I’m nothing like you.”
“Baby, I don’t think you know who you really are. Not yet.”
“I know for a fact that I wouldn’t abandon my family,” she snapped, surprised to hear Ginger in her words, but not regretting them “That’s not what real Chernyavskys do.”
“Real Chernyavskys,” her mother repeated, laughing quietly. “I don’t think you know who they are, either.”
That was it. She wouldn’t stand here and be laughed at by this stranger in her mother’s clothing. Maybe the family wouldn’t slam the door in Evelina’s face—blood was strong, even if she was weak—but Ruby wasn’t about to welcome her inside with a hug and a cup of tea. On unsteady feet, she strode past her mother to the door, determined not to look back.
“I don’t have a phone yet—I’ve been out of the country for a while—but I’ll be at the Molehill Motel in Hop River, when you want answers to your questions,” her mother called out. “Room 113!”
Ruby kicked the bedroom door closed behind her, defiantly undignified in her anger, and trying to ignore the inevitability of when.
• Nine •
Snow began to fall as they drove home, first in slow fat flakes, and then faster. Loose snow slithered across the road like wisps of smoke in the dark, blotting out the center line. Dahlia steered them white-knuckled, while Ginger turned the radio up—the kind of club song her sister hated—until the bass rattled the seats. Probably so Ruby wouldn’t try to speak to them from the back.
As if that could stop her.
“What do you think it means?” she shouted.
Ginger glanced up into the rearview mirror, where her glassy eyes met Ruby’s. “What, Mom coming back?”
Her heart gave a sickening lurch. “No,” she said flatly. “The Reading.”
“What?”
“The Reading,” she nearly screamed.
Defeated, Ging
er turned down the music. “I don’t know.”
“You think Polina lied about her Time?”
“No.”
“Then—”
“No, Ruby. Just . . .” Ginger swiveled around in her seat, and because the back of Dahlia’s old watermelon-pink Mustang was the size of a picnic cooler, her pale face hovered inches from Ruby’s. “Leave it alone.”
“But—”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do know. Am I a Chernyavsky or not?”
“You’re a kid. You don’t know anything about the world.”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t know your daily fifteen-minute commute was so enlightening.”
“If you two can’t stop fighting . . .” Dahlia yelled vaguely.
Ginger’s eyes nearly crackled with heat. “Maybe she did lie. Or Maybe Polina’s Time was true, and she found a way around it. Maybe she knew more than any of us. But it’s none of our business, either way.”
“How can you say that?” Her voice edged into a shriek.
“Were you even listening to Vera? You know what happened to us the last time we had secrets worth dying for? We almost died, Ruby. We’re safe now because we left all that shit in Russia.”
“You actually believe those stories? Like some dude in a Cossack hat with a hunting rifle is gonna show up on our doorstep trying to steal some super-secret powers that are so secret, we don’t even have them anymore? Come the fuck on.”
Dahlia slammed the horn, though the glittering, shifting road ahead was empty. “Stop it, okay, you guys? We can’t talk about this now. Any of it. Everybody’s sad tonight. Everyone’s scared. Let’s just keep it together.”
Besides the radio, the rest of the ride was silent to the bone.
They stayed quiet until they ducked inside the house, frozen from the dash to the front door. Dahlia hung her keys on the wall hook, then an extra set beside them; one Ruby had never seen before, dangling from a brass chain, the worn medallion stamped with a cursive P.
“What’s that?”
“The house keys. Vera gave them to us in case we need to get in.”
“To Polina’s? Why?”
Ginger rushed away to the kitchen to make tea, leaving Dahlia behind to answer her questions. “We might need her documents to get things settled, or to call a plumber if a pipe bursts, or there might be a break-in, or . . . I don’t know, Ruby,” she said tiredly. “Things happen. Somebody needs to take care of the place, and we’re the closest.” Again, Aunt Annie wasn’t a consideration, despite being a nearby grown-up with no job.
“So is it ours now? Like, are we going to live there?” Ruby wasn’t sure how she felt about the possibility. Polina’s home, one of the oldest in Saltville, was a palace compared to their place on Stone Road, crooked doors and rippled wallpaper and all. But her great-aunt had filled up the huge old house. Without her, wouldn’t it be like living in a library with no books?
“No,” Dahlia said after a pause, looking uneasy now. “She wanted . . . she didn’t leave it to us.”
The teakettle shrieked through every tiny room.
After they’d all changed into pajamas, the sisters curled up on the couch, Ruby’s feet under Ginger’s butt, her knee pressed into Dahlia’s shoulder. They watched reruns of Finding Bigfoot, a show where not finding Bigfoot was confirmation of his existence (“We scoured these woods all night and found no trace of the beast sighted just days ago, but bigfoots don’t linger around a single hunting ground, so it only makes sense that he’s moved on by now”). After two episodes, Dahlia headed off. She had a morning shift at ’Wiches and Wings. Then it was Ruby and Ginger and their cooling mugs of tea, the silence suddenly deafening.
Ruby shattered it first. “Can I just ask—”
“I don’t want to talk about the Reading,” Ginger cut in without looking at her.
“It’s not about that. Mostly. I was just wondering . . . did you, um, talk to Mom? After?”
“No.” Her sister’s face didn’t twitch in the blue light of the TV, but something dangerous simmered in her voice. “And I’m not going to.”
“Oh.”
“She can’t just fucking . . .” Ginger continued, her rage fanned to a crackling flame. “If she really thinks this family will take her back now . . .”
“Vera didn’t exactly kick her out,” Ruby muttered.
“So? She didn’t run out on Vera.”
Hadn’t she though? Hadn’t she committed the deepest betrayal possible for a Chernyavsky and left all of them?
Ginger did turn then, studying her. “Did she talk to you at the Reading?”
“Not about anything important. Do you think Dahlia will talk to her?”
“Doubt it. Not after Mom stuck her with us. That’s a lot to forgive.”
It was a bleak thought, but Ruby couldn’t deny it.
Her sister’s phone vibrated between them where her feet were still wedged against Ginger. Shifting, Ginger pulled it from the pocket of her yoga pants. All at once her rage dripped away, replaced by a syrupy grin.
“Levi?” Ruby guessed reluctantly.
The grin spread, unbearably sticky-sweet.
“Ugh. Why are you with that guy?”
To Ruby’s surprise, Ginger considered this, and seemed to answer honestly. “Because . . . he’s easy. He’s safe. He makes me laugh.”
“You’re too good for him.”
“Am I?” Ginger asked blandly.
“He makes you laugh, and that’s enough for you?”
“It has to be.” Her sister turned back to the TV. “When I was your age, I’d had my Time, but I still thought I was gonna leave Saltville, be a famous poet or journalist or I-don’t-know-what. Something. I was gonna go to college in Boston, and wear turtlenecks and men’s suit pants to poetry slams, and travel to every country alone. Then Mom . . . she did what she did. And I learned.”
“Learned what?”
Ginger pressed her fingertips together in thought. “How much . . . pain you can cause, when you run from your fate. To other people, and yourself.”
“Your fate is to be Levi Dorgan’s girlfriend?”
“Maybe. You’re a kid, Ruby. You think a small, happy life is this terrible, wasted thing, like I did. But you’ll grow up. You’ll learn, too.”
Ruby swallowed, dry throat clicking. “What was your Time, then?” It wasn’t the first time she’d asked, but maybe here in the dark with Ginger in honesty mode, the outcome would be different.
Ginger’s lips twitched once, and she smiled distantly. “Don’t stay up too late—back to school tomorrow.” She got up and went down the hall to her bedroom, leaving Ruby alone.
For a while, Ruby watched the hunters bumble around the woods with no intention of discovering their prey. Then she muted the volume, got her headphones from her bedroom, and sat back on the couch. Kerrigan Black would distract Ruby; she always did. Kerrigan, and her belief that anything could be explained, given enough time and access to the right science.
Ruby liked thinking that someday, somebody armed with the full knowledge of future science might look back and understand the Chernyavskys. Maybe a century from now, they would make sense.
And if someone wanted to travel back to 2019 to explain Ruby to herself, she wouldn’t hate that.
She sat with the TV on, still muted, and the lights off, staring idly at the new key ring on the hook in the wobbling blue glow from the screen and listening:
Because nobody else moves to do so, I force my way through the circling crowd toward the woman collapsed at its center. I hear some gasp at the inappropriateness of my dress (or at my undress) but I push through to kneel and look her in her tear-streaked face, aged by hard winters more so than years. “What is your name?” I ask simply so I won’t betray that I don’t belong here.
“I am the widow Harrison, and I am not guilty of that which my neighbors accuse me. I have done no murder or shape-shifting. I am no witch! I am not guilty!” she cries.
I don’t know if she’s innocent of murder, but certainly, she isn’t a witch. I’ve seen it in every time, and I’ve seen it in my time: a speck of dust catches in a camera lens, and suddenly, a manor is haunted. Cows die of natural causes and bloat in the field, and thus, a satanic cult roams the farmlands. Myths and legends—they’ve always grown around some tiny seed of mundane truth.
And who better to dig down and uncover that seed than I?
• Ten •
Because the twenty-four-hour Red Rooster Diner was only three blocks over from Fruit Street, Cece was already seated at a booth in the back when Ruby came in on Friday morning. “No fries?” Ruby asked her, sliding into the bench across from Cece.
“I ordered hash browns. It’s six a.m.” Her cousin yawned. She might be tired, but Cece looked perfect, hair tamed into two neat braids, her orange Dirty Birds T-shirt clashing expertly with her electric blue skirt. Then there was Ruby, with her too-big skinny jeans tucked into heavy boots, her once-sleek hair inflated with wind and icy rain.
“I didn’t know you were so particular about your potatoes.”
“What’s the Super Actual Emergency?” Cece asked, slightly impatient. Ruby had used the Super-Actual-Emergency emoji code—bomb + fireball + poop stack—because it was the most extreme code they had, guaranteed to pull Cece from her bed an hour before school, and some things you just couldn’t say over text. Such as:
“Why doesn’t anyone want to talk about what happened last night?”
Cece softened. “You mean your mom? Ruby, are you—”
“I’m fine. That’s not—I want to talk about the Reading.”
Cece stirred nervously in her seat, glancing around as though spies might be listening in, but Ruby pressed forward.
“I know they’re scared,” Ruby said. “Your mom. My sisters. All the grown-ups.”
“It’s like Vera said, right? The stories—”
“Are stories. Bad guys hunted Vladlena and her daughters in the woods in Russia one hundred years ago, so now we have to keep our heads down and get good grades and brush our teeth before bed and blah, blah, blah.”
The Wise and the Wicked Page 6