by Megan Hart
Babulya smiled, showing the gaps between her teeth. “Someday you will make for your own family.”
“Oh . . . I don’t think I’ll ever have a family.” This was something Theresa had thought about a lot over the past few years. “I don’t want kids. They’re a huge pain and hard to take care of.”
Babulya looked surprised. “What is this? No children? You’re young. You should wait. But to say you want none, ever?”
“I don’t really want to have to take care of anyone else.” Theresa snapped down a king, confident she was going to take this round, but Babulya had a matching king. They had to go again at war.
The old woman held her cards close to her chest, not putting down the next. “Children are a blessing, Theresa. You’ll change your mind when you have good husband who takes care of you.”
“Oh,” Theresa said as she carefully laid her next card. A jack this time. Good, but beatable. “I don’t want one of those, either.”
Babulya snorted laughter. “You will change your mind.”
“You don’t have a husband,” Theresa said.
“I had one,” Babulya said. “One was enough.”
“I don’t really even want one.” She watched as the grandmother placed a three, and then she scooped up the pile of cards, adding them to her deck underneath. She looked up to see Babulya frowning. “Well, I don’t.”
“Without husband, how will you have children?”
“I guess I could have kids without a husband, you know.” It was a little edgy, talking to Babulya like this, like admitting it was okay to have sex without being married. Theresa wasn’t sure she’d ever have sex, either. It seemed like a lot of work and effort for very little payout and a whole lot of problems.
“But . . . without children or husband, Titi, who will you make the challah for?”
It was the first time Babulya had ever called Theresa by a Russian nickname the way she sometimes did with Ilya and Nikolai. Unexpectedly, Theresa’s throat closed and her eyes stung. This was the first time she felt as though the old woman might truly consider her to be a granddaughter and not some interloper hanging on the outside.
“I could make challah for you,” Theresa said.
Babulya smiled. “What a good girl you are. I will not be here forever. And then what will you do?”
“I’ll make it for myself,” Theresa said with a shrug. “That’ll be okay.”
CHAPTER NINE
His whole life was crumbling all around him, and what was Ilya wasting his time doing? Sitting in Alicia’s old desk chair, looking up tanks on the Internet. It was easy enough, relatively speaking, to get one. If you had the money to pay for it.
He’d have to settle for a school bus, he thought as he scrolled through several pages on a website. Take off the front and back doors to make it safe. Remove the seats so that divers could swim all the way through it. He’d sink it far enough away from the helicopter to keep it interesting, although the bus itself wasn’t going to attract anyone. Most every dive site around had one.
A tank would bring people in.
He wasn’t idiotic enough to put any money down on one, though. Not because of the expense—in the past he’d taken out loans and lived on hard-boiled eggs and tuna for nearly a year to make upgrades to the Go Deep dive site. But why would he waste his time and money acquiring, hauling, and sinking a tank when it didn’t look likely he was going to have any kind of summer business this year at all?
The number of divers who used Go Deep, even during its best years, had never been impressive. There were several abandoned quarries with dive sites in the tristate area. He and Alicia had put a lot of effort into providing clean, economical facilities for divers here in central Pennsylvania, but Go Deep had always survived more on providing lessons and trips to exotic dive locations than on-site competition with the fancier, better-equipped dive sites.
The ones with water parks, for example, Ilya thought somewhat bitterly as he closed out of the website and brought up his e-mail instead. The ones with higher-end camping facilities and RV hookups instead of splintery picnic pavilions and outdated jungle-gym equipment. Easier access to highways instead of a tangled set of country roads winding through a small, rural town. None of those other places had a tank, he thought. He could be the first.
It wouldn’t matter, would it? He opened a string of e-mails from the new majority owners of Go Deep and immediately closed them. They’d only included him as a courtesy. Owning 40 percent of the property entitled him to that, he guessed. But not much else.
The clock was ticking down on his chances to take the deal they’d offered. Two more weeks. After that, Diamond Development was going to come in with their ’dozers and raze the campgrounds to build time-share condos. Hell, after that, they were going to do it whether he signed or not.
He’d seen the plans. They intended to build economy units just down from the luxury resort hotel that was going in higher on the hill. The whole shebang was going to have fully equipped recreational facilities and tended grounds and activities planned year-round. Boating, water skiing, with sleigh rides and ice skating in the winter. Stuff like that. It was going to do really well in this area, which did not boast any other family-oriented, classy resorts of the sort. There were even optional plans for a water park.
Go Deep was going to be one minuscule part of all that, and if he could get even the tiniest portion of that business, it would be worth putting up with this other bullshit. Yet Ilya knew he wasn’t going to gain anything but headaches. Sure, he still owned the shop, the parking lot, and everything he’d sunk into the water, along with his docks and water access, but the construction plans called for an almost complete blocking of his access road. Not to mention that once they put up all the new construction, his already shabby shop was going to look so much worse in comparison.
He wanted to blame Alicia for all this. When it came right down to it, if she hadn’t caved, he wouldn’t be where he was now, ready to lose what he’d spent his entire adult life building. Of course, without Alicia and her money, he would never have had anything to lose in the first place.
“Hey, man.” Niko rapped his knuckles on the edge of the door frame. “Quitting time.”
“Easy for you to say.”
His brother rolled his eyes. “Like you’re really working, anyway? C’mon. I thought we could grab some dinner.”
“You buying?” Ilya grinned, incapable of really hating his brother any more than he could harbor an unending fury against Alicia.
Well, at least not until he remembered the two of them were together. Romantically. The idea of it unsettled him and pissed him off, maybe because it didn’t make him jealous, and he felt like it should.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, leaning back in the desk chair that Alicia had picked out, the way she’d chosen everything in this office because it had been her space. She’d been the one to decide what items to carry in the shop, to make the class schedules, to order the coffee filters. She’d even designed the logo with the giant goldfish on it, a tribute to the fish her sister had won at the carnival so long ago, the one that supposedly had survived and grown to monstrous size. Alicia had been the one to keep Go Deep running, much the way she’d been the one to keep their marriage from dissolving . . . at least for a while. And what had he done? He’d been flash and fantasy, the idea guy with the big dreams she’d ended up doing the work for to make a reality. She’d given up on him, and now she’d given up on the business.
He couldn’t blame her.
He was a mess and probably always had been. Why anyone had ever given him the time of day, Ilya would never understand, but it seemed that women were drawn to the damage in him like bees to nectar. First Jennilynn . . . and with that thought, he stopped thinking. Put the idea of her out of his head. That, and that of her sister, the woman he’d married for better or worse. It had all been worse, in the end.
“I wouldn’t have to, if you’d take the deal,” Niko said. “You’d
be flush, then.”
Ilya gave his brother a faint grin. “Theresa sent you, huh?”
“No, Alicia did,” Niko said. “She said I needed to talk to you.”
The very last thing in the world Ilya wanted was the kind of talk he suspected his little brother was angling for, but at the same time, he wasn’t going to say no. Maybe they needed to get this shit out on the table, once and for all. “Fine. You’re still buying.”
“First round. Sure,” Niko said easily enough with a grin. “I’ll even drive.”
Dooley’s Pub had a decent-enough bar menu, along with a number of “traditional” Irish dishes. Ilya ordered shepherd’s pie. Niko got some French onion soup. Both ordered Guinness.
“Vashee zda-ró-vye,” Niko said when they clinked their glasses together.
“Whatever that means,” Ilya answered, though he knew it meant “cheers” or “to health” or something like that. It had been Babulya’s phrase, though Galina had sometimes said it, too.
“It means drink up and don’t be an asshole,” Niko told him.
They both sipped the drinks and settled into their chairs. The waitress who’d been on duty the previous week when Ilya had been here with Theresa came over to the table. “You’re back.”
Usually, Ilya would’ve taken that flirtatious smile for exactly the invitation he was sure she meant it to be, but tonight something kept him back from it. “Yep. I’m back.”
“Did Kelly take care of you already?” The waitress gestured at the glasses. “She took your order and everything?”
“Yeah,” Ilya said easily, not making eye contact. She got the hint and excused herself. He lifted his glass and caught a look from his brother. “What?”
“You’re a force of nature, man.”
Ilya laughed, surprising himself with the humor. “Nah.”
“I always envied that about you,” Niko said.
“Well,” Ilya replied after a second or so, “it’s not like it worked out all that great for me in the long run. Seems to me that you got the best of the deal.”
Niko nodded and drank. “Yeah. I guess I did.”
Kelly brought their food to the table with little fanfare, but Ilya welcomed the break in the conversation. He dug in to the sizzling platter of mashed potatoes and spiced ground beef while Niko merely let his soup rest.
Ilya looked up. “You’re not hungry?” he asked.
Niko shook his head, smiling. He waited a moment, then said, “Listen. About . . . things.”
“You’re both grown-ups.” Ilya finished his drink and signaled to a waitress who may or may not have been theirs, but it didn’t matter so long as she, or someone, brought him a whiskey. Neat. He was going to need it.
“Yeah, well. We all are, theoretically. Which is why I wanted to talk to you about things that are going on. Because we are adults,” Niko said. “And because you’re my brother.”
This would’ve been a hell of a lot easier with some whiskey in him, but as it was, Ilya managed a small smile. “You feel you gotta tell me something, but do you, Niko. Really? Do I really need to know?”
“I love her,” Niko said.
Ilya closed his eyes for a second or so. In that time span, like magic, by the time he opened them, the waitress had returned with his glass of whiskey. He took the chance to down it, grimacing at the smooth sting, before he said, “Of course you do. I wouldn’t expect it to be anything less than that.”
Niko frowned. “Ilya . . .”
“Look.” Ilya wished for water, but there was none, and the waitress had gone. He slicked the whiskey from his teeth with his tongue and fixed his brother with a look he hoped wasn’t threatening. “Me and Alicia . . . it was . . . we shouldn’t have gotten married. You were right. You told me I was crazy to think I could get over Jenni by marrying her sister, and you were absolutely right. You were a dick about it, but you weren’t wrong.”
“I didn’t mean to bring that up.”
“It’s the truth,” Ilya said. “Maybe if we’d been different sorts of people, me and Alicia, we’d have worked it out. But we weren’t. We shouldn’t have gotten married. She’ll tell you the same thing.”
Niko coughed and shifted. “But you did. It happened. You can’t take it back. “
“Lots of things happen. Are you going to let it stop you?” When his brother didn’t answer, Ilya shrugged, trying to make like it didn’t matter. It did, of course. He couldn’t help that.
“I love her,” Niko said again in a low voice that was nearly drowned out by the caterwauling of the girl at the karaoke stand in the pub’s back room. “I think I have since we were kids.”
The beer and the whiskey had settled into a slightly warm buzz in Ilya’s brain. Nowhere near drunk, but it was enough. He smiled at his brother, feeling the way his lips stretched across his teeth. More a snarl than a smile.
“The two of you . . . it’s messed up, for sure. But no more than anything else, I guess,” Ilya said, thinking of Jennilynn. Marrying the younger sister of his dead ex-girlfriend had seemed to make sense at the time, but there was no question it was its own level of mess. Still, he forced himself to give his brother a long, steady look. “But I did love her. No matter what happened or whatever she might’ve told you about us, or what she thinks . . . I really did think we were doing the right thing.”
“I know. People make mistakes.”
Ilya looked at his brother. “If you hurt her . . .”
“What will you do?” Niko asked evenly, not rising to the bait. “Kick my ass? Fair enough. But I don’t intend to hurt her.”
“Not like I did, is what you mean, right? You think you’re better for her than I was?”
His brother smiled. “Yes.”
The thing of it was, even though he might not have wanted to admit it, Ilya knew it was true. “Just about anyone would be, I guess. Even you.”
Niko very carefully gave his brother a double bird, the middle fingers on each hand stabbing the air before he lifted his glass again. Ilya laughed at the gesture. Something twisted inside him, then lifted. It might not ever go away, he thought. But he could at least try to let it go.
The waitress appeared again. Niko ordered a beer. Ilya asked for water and hoped he wouldn’t regret not going for something stronger.
“Why’d you come back here, really?” Ilya asked finally.
Niko shrugged. “Babulya was dying. I wanted to pay my respects.”
“Why’d you stay?” It seemed a fair enough question, even though by the way his brother’s expression twisted, Ilya thought Niko didn’t really want to answer.
“At first, for you.”
Ilya snorted. “Right.”
“It’s true.” Niko fixed him with a steady look. “You were the one who stayed here, taking care of her. Mom had gone off to South Carolina, doing who knows what. And I was gone most of the time, all those years.”
“Alicia was the one who took care of Babulya. Not me.” Ilya took a long pull of his water but met his brother’s eyes squarely. “She’s the one who figured out she needed to go into the home, the one who found it and arranged it. She’s the one who visited her. Not me. And it’s too late for me to change any of that now.”
“I’m not asking you to. Or to beat yourself up over it. You asked me why I came back and why I stayed. I told you the truth.” Niko shrugged.
“And now?”
“Now,” his brother said, “I stay for her.”
Ilya dragged his fork through the remains of his dinner. “How come you didn’t go with her when she went away? I thought for sure you would have.”
“She needed that time. To get out there. Do some things. I wanted her to have that. I wanted her to be sure that when she came back, she wanted to be here.”
Ilya sat back in his chair, mouth slightly agape. The beer, the whiskey—he wasn’t drunk, but he felt like he’d been shot up with something that made swirling, patterned lights blink on and off in the backs of his eyes. He stared at Niko, th
en gave his head a small, bemused shake.
“I think I just figured out what love is supposed to feel like,” he said.
His brother laughed. “You never knew?”
“No,” Ilya said seriously. “I don’t think so.”
There was silence between them for a moment. Niko put his spoon into the soup, breaking through the cheese barrier to release some steam from the broth beneath. He looked at Ilya.
“You still have time,” he said.
Ilya snorted. “Okay, Mary Sunshine.”
“Just saying.”
Ilya rolled his eyes and dug his fork into his dinner to take another bite. “Whatever.”
“So . . . is this going to be okay?” Niko asked.
“Yeah. I guess so. Sure.” Ilya shrugged, cutting his gaze. It might be. It might not. But Niko was his brother, and Alicia would always be family.
They ate and drank and shot the shit about stupid things. The house and its repairs. Their mother. The weather. The conversation wasn’t easy or light, but it wasn’t awful, either. It was maybe even better than he’d deserved, Ilya thought, when Niko’s phone blinked with a message, and he watched his younger brother’s smile at the sight of whatever words were on the screen.
“You gotta go?” Ilya asked. “She’s waiting for you.”
Niko hesitated but nodded. “She’s not ordering me to come home, if that’s what you think.”
“But you want to. So go.” Ilya grinned and shot a look toward the flirtatious waitress from before. “I can find something to keep me occupied. Don’t worry about it. I’ll find a ride home.”
Niko was already gesturing for the check, but Ilya shook his head. “I got it.”
“You sure?” Niko frowned. “I can grab this one.”
“I got it,” Ilya repeated.
“You should take the deal,” Niko said quietly. “Take the money, man. Get out from under that place and move on.”
“It’s not as easy as that.”