by Amanda Gray
TWENTY-NINE
Jenny stood by the window as she dialed Ben’s number. Nikolai and Tiffany watched her from the other side of the room.
Ben picked up on the first ring. “Finally! Where have you been?”
“I’m sorry,” Jenny said. “I … I’ve had some stuff going on. I didn’t hear my phone. What’s up? Is everything okay?”
There was a pause from the other end of the phone. “My dad’s out, Jenny.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he’s out,” Ben practically shouted. “He’s out of prison. Now.”
“But … that can’t be right.” Jenny thought back to what Ben had told her on the train. “You said he wouldn’t be out until September.”
“I know what I said, but I guess I was wrong. He’s out, and my mom has the truck at the store. Can you give me a ride?”
“To Books?” she asked.
“Yeah, my mom’s closing for Samuel. I need to pick her up and get her back here to pack some things so we can get out of here.” His voice didn’t sound right. It was low and flat. Like he was already gone.
Jenny glanced over at Nikolai, still on the sofa. They still didn’t have a plan for evading the Order and it was getting later by the minute. But Ben was her friend. He needed her.
“I’ll be right there,” she said into the phone. She hung up, turning to Nikolai and Tiffany. “I have to go.”
Nikolai stood. “Where?”
“Ben needs help. I’m literally the only person he knows in Stony Creek, and he needs help.”
“We’ll go with you,” Tiffany said.
Jenny shook her head. “It’ll be safer for Nikolai to stay here. I’m going to take Ben to Books to get his mom and the truck and see if he needs anything else. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Nikolai moved toward her. “There’s no way you’re going alone.”
“Yes,” she said. “I am. Don’t fight me on this. I’m already worried about Ben. The last thing I need is to worry about you, too.”
His green eyes flashed. “And you don’t think I’d be worried about you?” He shook his head. “No way. We can either stand here and talk about it the rest of the day or we can get moving. But either way, I’m going.”
She could tell from the set of his jaw that he wasn’t going to budge. They were just wasting time talking about it.
* * *
They had to bang on the door for almost five minutes before Ben opened it. His hair was tousled, his eyes a little wild as he told them to come in, giving only a passing glance at Tiffany.
“Sorry. I’m packing.”
They followed him up the stairs to his room. Jenny couldn’t believe the mess. Clothes and shoes and books were piled every which way on the floor and bed. Ben didn’t seem to notice Jenny was there as he moved frantically from his dresser to the closet, throwing stuff into a suitcase and duffel bag that sat open on his bed.
“Can we help?” Jenny asked.
“No. Books doesn’t close for another hour. I’m just trying to get as much together as I can so that when my mom comes back she only has to pack her things.”
He closed the lid of the suitcase, forcing it to latch, and zipped the duffel.
A lump formed in Jenny’s throat. She didn’t want Ben to go. Didn’t want to think of him running, always running. Never able to settle down long enough for the kind, affable Ben she’d gotten to know to take root.
“Where will you go?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, picking up the suitcase in one hand, the duffel in the other. “I’m going to pick my mom up from the store and bring her back here. We’ll pack up as much as we can and leave tonight. I’ll have to worry about the rest later.”
He was halfway to the front door when Jenny stopped him.
“What if I told you that you could stop running?” she asked. “For good?”
He turned with a weary sigh. “What are you talking about, Jenny?”
“I … I think I know why we saw what we saw with the music box. In our dream?” she reminded him.
He looked at the door. “I really have to go.”
“There’s something unfinished!” she shouted. “Something undone from your last life. I … I think it has to do with your father, and somehow Nikolai and I are part of it, too.”
“Something undone from my past life?” She couldn’t tell if it was disbelief in his voice or just exhaustion.
Tiffany stepped forward. “It’s like this: lots of people believe that we relive mistakes from one life to the next until we solve them for good. I think that’s why you and Jenny saw what you saw in the dream. You and Jenny and even Nikolai were all together before.”
Ben shook his head. “And who are you again?”
“Tiffany,” she said simply. “Jenny’s friend.”
He nodded skeptically. “Right.”
“What she’s saying makes sense if you think about it,” Jenny continued. “I think we were all together, and something happened that left some kind of … I don’t know, trauma or something.”
“Between you and me and,” he glanced at Nikolai, “him.”
Nikolai glared. “I don’t like the idea any better than you do.”
Jenny took a deep breath, ignoring their posturing. “I know it sounds crazy, but I think it happens more often than people think.”
“I can’t deal with this right now,” Ben said, starting again for the door.
“Jenny’s right,” Nikolai called after him. “She’s proof that we keep living, that we keep finding those to whom we’re connected. I found her again by coming forward to the time when her soul was reborn. You found her again because you have something that you and she need to complete. Through all that time and space, we’re together again. Maybe the universe is trying to tell us something.”
Ben stopped and turned around. “Even if this is all true, I don’t have time to figure out the past. I’m too busy trying to stay alive—and keep my mother alive—in the present.”
“But what if they’re connected?” Jenny said. “What if what happened then is connected to what’s happening now? With your mom and dad? What if figuring it out means putting it to rest?”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Ben.” She stepped closer to him. “You still have the music box, right?”
“So?” he said.
“So, we could try.”
He seemed to consider it for a few seconds before shaking his head. “I can’t. My mom’s at the store. I have to go.”
Jenny glanced at the clock on the mantle. “The store doesn’t close for another forty-five minutes. It’s summer. There will be people there until then. She’s safe for now. Remember, the last time we used the music box, we were only under for fifteen minutes.” She heard the desperation in her voice. Why was it so important to help Ben? His situation with his dad, in this life at least, had nothing to do with her.
But she felt bonded to him now. Like her own future—and Nikolai’s—was connected to Ben’s.
“Nikolai and Tiffany could watch us,” she said. “Make sure we’re not under too long.”
He didn’t say anything, but she could tell from the look in his eyes that he was considering it. That he needed to find resolution to the mystery as much as she did.
“Please, Ben,” she pleaded. “Let me help you.”
He nodded, his eyes meeting hers. “Okay.”
* * *
“Ready?” Jenny sat on the floor with the music box in her lap.
Ben nodded. He was stretched out on the sofa behind her, his body taut with tension. His shirt came up in the front, revealing a little of the skin above his jeans. He lifted his head to look at Nikolai and Tiffany, sitting across from them.
“Remember, you have to wake us up by 9:15. My mother’s life depends on it.”
Nikolai nodded, his face sober.
“Got it,” Tiffany said.
Jenny took a deep breath and opened the
jewel-encrusted antique. It took a few seconds for Moonlight Sonata to drift through the room. The notes were clangy and mechanical, but Jenny immediately felt something shift inside her. Like a door creaking open or an idea that suddenly clarified.
All of a sudden, there was something else out there. A possibility that hadn’t been there before.
She pulled out the piece of paper, the faded ink looping across its crackly surface.
“Okay, here we go.” She leaned her head back against the couch and read, taking her time with the words. Giving Ben ample opportunity to fall under their spell. “Close your eyes as gently as a bird fluttering to rest on a spring branch. Let go of this world and its cares as you drift amidst the blackness of the great beyond, that place of both mystery and understanding. You are now in the place where all queries may be answered. Where all questions will find resolution.” Jenny felt her hold slip on this time and place. The passage of time seemed to slow until she could almost see it flowing through the air in front of her. Even the dust in the air was suddenly suspended. She could see the tiny particles hanging before her as if unsure what to do or where to go. Her tongue felt cumbersome, but she forced herself to keep talking, not daring to look back and see if Ben was asleep. “In this place, you hold the keys to even those things you have not yet wondered, but somehow know. There are no barriers here. No separation of time and space.”
Everything fell away.
THIRTY
Dread began at her feet, filling her bit by bit until she thought she might drown in it.
“Stay close, Maria,” her mother whispered, ushering Maria and her sisters closer, while their father held tight to Alexei’s hand.
It was the terror in her mother’s eyes that frightened Maria the most. Even with all that had happened, all the whispering, rumors, and threats, her mother had never seemed truly afraid until this moment. In fact, both Mama and Papa had gone to great lengths to see that their routine was maintained. Even while moving between Alexander Palace, the Governor’s mansion in Tobolsk and, most recently, Yekaterinburg, their tutoring had continued, often at the hands of Papa himself. There had been many tense moments, many meetings and interrogations. There had even been a slow winnowing of the luxuries to which they were accustomed. They had not had coffee or butter in months, and their staff had been reduced to a shadow of its former size. But through it all, her parents had seemed calm, their innate regality giving them a sense of dignity even in the most frightening of times.
But this was different.
This time they had been roused in the middle of the night and ordered to dress. Maria could hear shouting outside the room in which they were being kept. Voices rang through the halls of the house. Urgent. Nervous. Sharp. She cowered closer to her sisters, wondering if Nikolai was safe. Would he do as he’d promised? Would he come for her? For all of them? Or had he already been tried as a traitor because of his love for her?
With a bang, the door flew open and the Bolshevik, Yurovsky, marched in, holding his head high and his back straight in the way that men did when they wanted others to think them important but knew deep down that they were not.
“You and your family will accompany us,” Yurovsky said. “Now.”
Her sisters began to weep. Maria looked questioningly at her mother, waiting for the nod of her head that would indicate they should obey. A moment later, it came. Maria took her sisters’ hands and followed her parents and Alexei from the room, Yurovsky and his guards on their heels.
She had no idea where the men were taking her, but people lined the halls as they made their way through the house. Some of them stared defiantly—one even spitting at Papa—but many averted their eyes, as if by looking at Maria and her family they would somehow share their fate.
She tried not to think about the jewels sewn into her clothing. They scraped against her skin through the fabric of her dress. It was the least of her worries. Whatever else was happening she needed to know where Nikolai was, to find out if he was all right. Her eyes searched the crowd frantically, desperate for just a glimpse. A sign that he was alive.
But it was another face that got her attention as they approached the back of the house.
Sergei.
He glanced at her, his eyes wild, trying to say something to her. The man next to him—the man who was his father, who had served Maria’s own father for many years—said something and Sergei spun around.
The family arrived at a set of stairs. Maria gazed downward, watching her parents and Alexei, along with his maid, Anna, descend into the unknown. She knew for certain they were going down there to meet their doom, every one of them. This was no relocation. No move from one ill-maintained residence to another.
This was the end.
Even as she thought it, she knew there was nothing to be done about it. She fought against the panic that made her want to turn around and run, though that would only mean a quicker death.
“Hurry along now, Princess.”
The words were gentle and came from a guard to her right. His eyes were kind and sad, but she stepped down anyway. Her parents were almost at the bottom. There was nowhere to go without them, even if she could. Her sister’s footsteps on the steps behind her propelled her forward.
All of them were ushered into a small, concrete room at the bottom of the staircase. Instinctively, they huddled near one another, though Papa still stood straight and tall. Maria watched with fearful eyes as the guards stepped into the room, armed with guns and bayonets, fanning out along the walls on either side of the door.
Yurovsky arrived and stopped on the landing.
Behind him, Maria could see Sergei and his father. Sergei’s face was red as he shouted at his father. She was close enough to hear.
“You can’t do this! You can’t let this happen! They’re children. Innocents.”
Maria watched Sergei’s father’s reaction. His face showed he was unbowed. “You were not asked for an opinion. You will demonstrate your loyalty to your country or you, too, will be considered a traitor.”
“Me?” Sergei stared at his father in shock. “I’m your son.”
The older man nodded. “Yes, but only loyalty to Russia matters.”
Through the shadows, Sergei’s gaze found Maria, his blue eyes meeting hers. He turned back to his father. There were so many conversations taking place around her, Maria could only partially hear him.
“Father—”
She lost the next few words.
Then: “Don’t let them do this! It is—” The next phrase was indecipherable, but she caught his last plea. “Spare the daughters. Just the daughters. Please.”
Maria held her breath.
Then, the older man lifted his hand and slapped Sergei hard across the face.
The sound echoed in the basement room. All talking stopped as everyone turned to stare at the father and son.
Yurovsky turned to Sergei’s father. “Is there a problem, Captain?”
“None at all.” Sergei’s father didn’t take his eyes off his son. “My son simply needed a reminder that the command has changed.”
Yurovsky turned his steely eyes on Sergei, who held one hand to his face as if to hide his shock and shame.
“Has your father made things clear or do you require a more … forceful demonstration?”
Sergei hesitated before shaking his head. He dropped his hand from his face and then raised it to salute. “No, sir.”
Yurovsky nodded. “Very well.”
“You will leave before you further shame our name,” Sergei’s father said, his voice cold.
Sergei’s eyes returned to Maria’s one more time, silently pleading with her to forgive him.
But before she could nod to absolve him, his father pushed him in the direction of the stairs.
Sergei turned crisply on his heel and disappeared from view.
Yurovsky descended into the stairwell, his footsteps echoing like gunshots on the stairs leading to the basement. He entered, closing th
e door behind him and pulling from his pocket a piece of paper. He began reading.
“Nikolai Aleksandrovich, in view of the fact that your relatives are continuing their attack on Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee has decided to execute you—”
Her father stepped forward. “What—”
He didn’t have time to say more. The room seemed to both split open and collapse as the guards stepped forward and fired. Papa dropped to the floor like a stone, but the guards did not stop. They turned their guns on Mama. On all of them.
There was screaming. So much screaming. It was almost as deafening as the sound of the guns firing. Maria cowered with her sisters, pulling Alexei down with them, trying to shield him from the ricochet of the bullets as well as those that would surely be aimed their way soon.
Something stung Maria at the base of her neck, a duller thud hitting her in the chest and stomach. She felt the impact only vaguely, the stones in her dress providing a barrier between the bullets and her skin. Still, she felt herself sinking to the floor. Falling and falling, trying to keep hold of her sisters’ hands. Trying to catch sight of Alexei.
There was a clatter at the door as someone burst through. And then, a man’s voice.
“What have you done?” A moan followed by footsteps rushing toward her.
Her torso being lifted into strong arms.
“What have you done?” he cried.
Another crashing as more bullets flew, and Nikolai, her Nikolai, throwing his body over hers. Then, a silence so great Maria thought the world had stopped turning.
Everything had ended.
Everything.
She blinked as she saw a flash of silver. One of the guards advanced on them with a bayonet. Nikolai’s body still warm next to hers, his green eyes looking at her as if there were only the two of them in the whole world. He reached out to her, his hand finding the wound at her collarbone, trying to cover it as blood trickled through his fingers.
“I’ll find you,” he said softly. “I’ll find you, Maria.”
And then silence.