Almost To The Altar

by Neesa Hart

  It was the nights that were agonizing, long, sleepless and miserable. She began to fear the hours she’d spend alone in her apartment with nothing to do but think about him. Once, her home had been like a safe haven, free from the rush and pressure of the city. But now, she saw him in every room.

  Over and over, she studied the picture of herself dancing with her father. This was where she’d come from, who she’d been. How had she allowed herself to lose that person along the way, and how could she get her back? In the long hours of the night, the answers began to take form.

  And she knew, knew with a surety she hadn’t felt for years, that she had just one hope of happiness. It lay with Elsa Krestyanov.

  When Kate English allowed Nikki’s discharge a week later, with the strictest possible orders that he had to keep still, rest and not allow anything to hinder his recovery, Anna and Andrei took him home with them.

  Without even the reassuring visits with her brother, Elise felt more bereft, more alone, than she had in her life. A part of her resented Wil for doing this to her. Before he unsettled her life, she’d been satisfied, if not content. Things in her life had been simple. Choices few. Decisions easy.

  In a few short weeks, Wil had taken her peace of mind and turned it into chaos. Worse, he’d made her love him again. And he’d left her exactly as he had before. Hurt and deserted.

  The days passed in relentless succession as she struggled with herself, with the choices that lay before her. Twice she nearly lost her temper with Roger Philpott. The day before the auction, she had agreed to take delivery of the cars from Jan Larsen. It never occurred to her that Wil would oversee the vehicles’ transport himself. That must be the rea-!!son, she decided, why her heart lodged itself in her throat the moment she saw him standing in the auction house, a clipboard in his hand, waiting for her. She’d deliberately chosen this auction facility for its large storage area. It had enough space to display the cars in. But now she almost regretted the rural location. She would have felt less trapped if she hadn’t been forced to see Wil again in the relative solitude of the glorified barn.

  Her heels clicked on the concrete floor as she slowly moved toward him. She’d chosen this particular location for the auction because of the wide, barnlike doors, which provided ease of access for the antique cars, and its large space. Today, it seemed cavernous.

  “Hello, Elise.” Lines of fatigue marred his handsome face. He looked much as he had when she first saw him a couple of weeks ago, except for the slightly haunted look in his eyes.

  She swallowed. “Hi. I was expecting Jan.”

  “He refused to come.”

  The air between them seemed to thicken as she took the clipboard from him. “Still playing matchmaker?”

  “Something like that.”

  The heat from his body seemed to envelop her. Elise pushed a tendril of hair behind her ear as she studied the clipboard. “Everything looks fine,” she told him. “Where do I sign?”

  “Don’t you want to inspect first?”

  Quickly she glanced at the collection of twenty vehicles, parked in neat rows, their paint and chrome gleaming in the artificial light. “No,” she said, forcing herself to meet his gaze. “I trust you implicitly.”

  For long, tense seconds, he stared at her. “Aina—”

  “Where do I sign?” An urgent need to flee the auction house, his presence, began to build within her.

  With a muttered curse, Wil flipped a page on the clipboard. “Here.”

  She scrawled her signature, then handed the paperwork to him. “You’ll invoice me within thirty days?”

  “Per our agreement.”

  “Per our agreement.”

  They stared at each other. Neither seemed willing to walk away. “I’ve been meaning to call you,” he said, as if that explained the silence of the past few days, “but Pop and I have been busy finishing the work on the cars.”

  “Of course.” She wouldn’t give him an inch.

  “It’s not that I didn’t want to, Elise.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Damn it, you aren’t going to make this easy, are you?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Why indeed?” He exhaled a long breath, then changed the subject. “So how are things coming for the auction?”

  “All right.” The neutral conversation gave her time to collect her wits. Grateful, she seized on it. “I’ve already sold most of the items to various museums and private collectors. Tomorrow all we have to auction are the cars, a few odds and ends, some art pieces, and the wedding dresses.”

  “Wedding dresses?”

  She nodded. “Chester Collingham had a fetish. There are seven dresses from different eras. Each has some type of historical significance. One belonged to Princess Claire.” She was babbling, but couldn’t seem to stop. If she stopped, he’d leave.

  “Fascinating.”

  At his quip, she ended the inane conversation. “Sorry. I’m sure you have work to do.” She would have left then, but Wil’s hand closed on her elbow.

  Through the linen fabric of her suit jacket, his fingers felt warm, like heated steel. “Elise, wait.”

  Several seconds passed before she could make herself look at him. “What do you want, Wil?”

  “You.” His voice broke on the word. “I want you. Aina, I’m miserable.”

  Despite herself, she swayed toward him ever so slightly. “I can’t do this.”

  “Tell me you’ve slept more than eight hours since the last time I saw you.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Then why are we doing this to ourselves?”

  “Because you want something from me I can’t give you.” She almost choked on the words.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  Something inside her started to crumble. “There’s no point in having this conversation,” she told him.

  “How long are you going to let yourself be ruled by your head, Elise. What’s it going to take to let your heart make a few of the choices?”

  Because the question echoed the one she’d asked herself so many times over the past few days, she couldn’t answer it. “We’ve said everything there is to be said.”

  His fingers remained on her elbow, but the grip loosened, became a caress. “Have you seen Nick since he went home?” he asked.

  “You know I haven’t.”

  “He’s doing much better. He misses you.”

  “He called me.”

  Another nerve-racking pause. “Do you want to see him?”

  Elise knew all too well that Wil wasn’t asking her to see Nikki. He was asking her to face her father once more. “I’m not welcome there.”

  “I’ll drive you. I’ll stay with you.”

  “I can’t go there, Wil.” Unable to hold his gaze, she glanced away. “I’m not strong enough.”

  “Aina.” Wil pulled her into his arms. “I’m dying without you.”

  The soft fleece of his sweatshirt pressed against her face like a comforting blanket. “I’m miserable, too,” she con-!!fessed.

  “Please.” His hand cupped the back of her head. “Please.”

  For long moments, she enjoyed the feeling of holding him again, of being held. His nearness comforted her, like a balm to her weary heart. With Wil, she had the strength to do what she couldn’t on her own. “Promise you’ll stay till it’s over.”

  He sucked in a ragged breath. “Elise?”

  “If you promise to stay, I’ll go with you.”

  For long, breathless moments, Elise stared at the butcher shop, and the small apartment above it, that had been her home for nearly twenty years. Little had changed on the bustling street in West Chicago.

  Children on bicycles laughed as they played in the street. A lively game of baseball occupied the vacant corner sandlot. A sumptuous display of pastries still decorated the front window of Otto Korlov’s bakery. Stands of fresh fruit still sat in front of the corner market. A wooden sign, cut in the shape of a suit jacke
t, still hung in front of Martin Bernstein’s tailor shop.

  And the window of her father’s butcher shop still read Krestyanov Sons.

  Beside her, Wil took her hand. “You okay?”

  “No.” She continued to stare at the building.

  “It’s going to be all right, Aina.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  Wil nudged her chin until she faced him. “Because you’re here. Because I have faith in you.”

  “What happens after today?” she asked.

  He rubbed his thumb across the curve of her mouth. “We’ll take this one step at a time. All right?”

  After a brief hesitation, she nodded. “All right.”

  In silent mutual agreement, they stepped out of the car into the warm afternoon. Elise felt oddly out of place, like an intruder in a world where she didn’t belong. Her gray linen-weave suit seemed inappropriate, her upswept hair a bit too formal.

  And her feet hurt.

  She glanced down at her gray pumps in amazement. She’d grown up wearing shoes that didn’t fit. Always she’d had hand-me-downs from Maks, until his feet had stopped growing. Then she’d shared shoes with Anna, despite her mother’s smaller foot size. As an adult, she conscientiously sought shoes for their comfort. She spent a fortune on the best-made, most expensive shoes she could own. The pair she wore had never hurt before, but being here seemed to arouse the remembered pain.

  Wil’s hand settled at the small of her back. “Ready?”

  No. She’d never be ready for this. She’d run from this moment for ten years. Through the window of the shop, she saw her father laughing with several customers. Countless times she’d walked down this street to that very sight. Now it all seemed to be happening in slow-motion, as if her memories were overlaying the reality. “The back door,” she whispered. “I want to use the back door.”

  Wordlessly Wil followed her down the narrow alley to the back of the butcher shop. The narrow iron staircase that led to the upstairs apartment was lined, as always, with fresh linens. Anna put them out to dry every afternoon. Elise picked up one of the cotton aprons and slipped it over her head.

  The worn cotton was butter-soft against her hands, testimony to the hours Anna had spent scrubbing the stains from its front. She fumbled briefly with the strings, adjusting the apron until it tied at her waist. Without looking at Wil, she stepped into the back of the shop and picked up the push broom.

  Andrei’s laughter boomed from the front of the store. He was in the middle of telling a story about Nikki’s accident, one Elise suspected he shared with every customer, when she stepped into the brief hallway that separated the back storage room from the shop. Andrei didn’t look up. Elise continued to sweep.

  Several long minutes passed while she pushed the broom in the remembered ritual. When finally the bell on the front door rang, signaling the customers’ departure, the shop fell silent.

  “Benjamin,” Andrei called toward the back of the shop, “is that you? You’re late today.”

  Elise stepped from the shadows of the back room into the small corridor that separated the storage area from the butcher shop. Andrei was facing away from her. “It’s been a good day, Benjamin,” he said. “Mrs. Weischman, she’s having a party. She bought three racks of lamb.” Elise’s throat went dry. “Why were you late? Did you get held up at school?”

  Late. Why was she ten years late doing what should have been done long ago? “I’m late because I was too stubborn to listen to my father—” she said. Her voice broke on the last word.

  Andrei spun around. His wide shoulders partially blocked the sunlight from the front window, and an eerie shadow settled on the interior of the shop. Eyes so very much like her own met her gaze. In them, she saw an indecipherable emotion that frightened her. Squelching a growing sense of panic, she resisted the urge to flee to Wil, where he still stood, in the shadows of the storeroom.

  She indicated the broom in her hand instead. “I see you’re training a new boy?” Andrei still didn’t answer. “He doesn’t get the corners, just like I used to.” She pointed to the small pile of dust she’d swept from the storeroom. “And the cobwebs.” Pointing to the ceiling, she continued. “You probably have to remind him to brush down the cobwebs. You know how Mrs. Weischman is. If she sees cobwebs, she’ll complain.” She choked out the last word as she saw her father’s expression slowly begin to crack.

  The implacable mask was gone. In its place was a fierce anger that made her insides tremble. “Why are you here?” he demanded.

  Elise shivered. “Because I can’t do this anymore.” She set the broom aside. “I can’t pretend it doesn’t matter to me that I hurt you.” Slowly, she walked toward him, encouraged when he didn’t back away. “I never wanted to hurt you, Pop.”

  “You chose this way. You no longer wanted to be my daughter. This, it is not my fault.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not true. That’s not what I wanted.” Two more steps. “I wanted to make you proud of me. Everything I did, I did because I wanted you to be proud of me.”

  “You gave away your name because you wanted my respect?” he asked.

  The bitterness in his tone made her cringe. “I gave away my name because I was foolish,” she said. “And I was young. Pop…” She walked the remaining steps between them. “I needed to know that you loved me. Maybe I did it to see how hard I could push you. I don’t know. I just know that I’d lived in Maks’s shadow so long, and the day I felt like I stepped from it, you rejected me.”

  “Maks.” He said the name with a wealth of passion and sorrow. “You don’t know what you say, Elsa.”

  “I do.” She barely resisted the urge to clutch his apron front. “All I ever wanted was to be close to you. After Maks, I couldn’t make myself forgive you for loving him more than you loved me.” A tear plopped onto her cheek. Followed by another. And another. “And you never forgave me for not dying in his place.”

  Andrei’s big body shook. Elise glanced at him in surprise when his large hands settled on her upper arms. “This is not true.”

  “It was, Pop. But we can’t change that. I know how much you loved Maks, and I’m sorry I couldn’t replace him for you. But I love you. I need you.”

  “Elsa.” He said her name with such sorrow, that tears clogged in her throat.

  “At the hospital—” she shook her head “—I needed you. I was so scared of losing Nikki, and I needed you. Why did you turn on me like that? What did I do to make you hate me that much?”

  For long, unsettling moments, he stared at her. Elise began to wonder if he would even answer her. “I do not hate you,” he said.

  “Then why? Why, Pop?”

  He drew a deep breath. “Kynieza, what have I done?”

  Startled, Elise met his gaze. He dropped his hands, then turned from her to walk to the window. Bracing his arms on the large jukebox, the same one he’d used when he taught her to dance, he hung his head forward. “Pop?”

  He seemed not to hear her. “Elsa—” his voice sounded ragged, as if he’d swallowed gravel “—I am an old fool. What will I have to do for you to forgive an old fool?” She didn’t dare answer. She was in serious danger of melting into the floor if she did. After several minutes, Andrei dragged in a weary breath and asked, “I have never told you about the day you were born, no?”

  “No.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

  “You do not know, then.”

  “Know what, Pop?” Elise’s hands fisted at her sides as she watched him struggle.

  “Maks, he was a good boy. I was glad to have a son, but your mama, she wanted a girl.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “In New York, I thought the boys, they would have a better chance at life.”

  “Oh.” The knowledge that even then, long before the tragedy of Maks’s death, he hadn’t wanted her, wounded her.

  “But then you were born,” he continued. “From the first time I saw you, I lost myself. There has ne
ver been a baby more beautiful than you.”

  Elise sucked in a shallow breath as she tried to prevent a fresh flood of tears. Andrei continued to stare out the window. “You wrapped your fingers on my hand, and I lost myself,” he said again. “It was for you we moved here. The boys, they would have survived, but I could not bear to see you there in New York.

  “Maks, he died because he had no strength. He was weak, my Maks. I knew that. But you, you were my Kynieza, my princess.”

  “Pop?”

  He seemed not to hear her. “I wanted to give everything to you. After Maks died, sadness filled our house. I didn’t know how to find you in that sadness. If I pushed you from me, it is my biggest sorrow.” He mumbled several phrases in Russian. Phrases she recognized as bitter selfrecriminations. “I was angry that you blamed yourself for Maks’s death. I was angry at my son for doing that to you. I loved Maks, but I never wanted him more than you. Never.”

  The raw feeling in Elise’s throat eased as the sobs she’d withheld shook her shoulders. How could she have been so foolish? In their grief, they’d both pushed away the one thing they most wanted. “I’m so sorry.”

  Still Andrei didn’t face her. “When you came here that day, when you told me you no longer were a Krestyanov, I lost my temper. I have regretted those words for ten years, drouska. You are not the stubborn one. It is me.” He straightened his shoulders then, as if the weight had suddenly been lifted from them. “It is me,” he said again. “I pushed you from me. In my sorrow for Maks’s death, I pushed you from me.”

  “Then why did you tell Wil that I said all those horrible things?”

  He shuddered. “I was ashamed.”

  “I never meant to shame you.”

  “Not of you,” he said. “Of me. Of how I acted. I didn’t want to admit to him that I’d pushed you from me. I couldn’t tell him the truth. At the hospital—” he shook his head “—I was afraid. I couldn’t think that I could lose you and Nikki the same night, so I turned you away from me. I hope you can forgive me for that.”

  She wiped her hand across her eyes, mopping at the tears that now flowed freely down her face. “There’s nothing to forgive. I just want you to love me again,” she whispered.