Page 43 of My Wedding Night Massacre

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t tell me it’s the right move. I know it’s the right move. I know the logic, it’s sound.” He presses the back of his hand against his mouth for a second. “I still can’t do it.”

I stand up, cross the space between us, and I put my hands flat on his chest, feeling the tension in him, the held-in furious grief of a man who came back from the dead and is terrified of what it costs to have done so. He looks down at me with his jaw tight and his eyes fixed on mine with the look he gets when I’m the only thing in the room he trusts himself to focus on.

“I know,” I say. “I know you can’t. I know what it took to say that.” I hold his gaze. “But Denis is two years old, and he’s waiting for me, for a car that isn’t going to come. He doesn’t know what’s happening. He doesn’t understand why his mom isn’t coming to see him. I’m the only person in this room who knows how my father thinks well enough to buy us the time to find him.” I press my hands harder against his chest, feeling his heartbeat under my palms, steady, real, and present. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m standing in this kitchen, and I’m going to make one phone call. When I hang up, you’re going to be right here with me.” I don’t look away from him. “You found me in a church. You won’t keep me in a kitchen.”

He looks at me for a long moment. His hand comes up and covers both of mine, resting on his chest, pressing them there, holding them.

“If it goes wrong,” he says.

“I hang up,” I say. “Immediately. No improvising.”

Another long moment. He breathes out, one slow, controlled breath, the sound of a man releasing the version of this he wanted and accepting the version that’s possible.

“I’m in the room, and you put him on the speaker,” he says. “I hear every word.”

“Every word,” I agree.

He steps back. I turn to the table and pick up my phone. My hands are steady, which surprises me, the steadiness of someone who has already accepted what she’s about to do and stopped fighting it.

My father answers on the second ring. It’s almost as if he were waiting. He probably was.

“Pavlina.” His voice is exactly what it always is. Low, steady, the warmth in it so familiar, I spent twenty-seven years mistaking it for love rather than ownership. “I was wondering when you’d call.”

“Father.” I keep my voice at the register I need, slightly unsteady, a breath caught just below the surface. “I need to talk to you.”

“Of course you do,” he says, and those four words carry a softness so practiced it took me until my wedding day to understand it wasn’t real. “I’m here. Take your time.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking yesterday.” I let my voice go rough at the edges, trying to make it sound as if I’m fighting tears. “I saw him and I just. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t.” A breath, coming out perfectly shaky. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“No,” my father says, still in that same patient tone. “You didn’t.” A pause. “It was a difficult situation. Anyone would have been overwhelmed.”

The understanding in his voice is a blade. He’s not being generous. He’s offering me a version of events I can inhabit, a story where I was overwhelmed rather than choosing, confused rather than clear. He’s building the cage and calling it shelter.

“I need to see Denis,” I say. “I need to see him. I can’t think about anything else until I know he’s all right.”

“Denis is perfectly fine,” my father says, and I hear the shift in his voice on his name, the slight settling of it, the weight he places there. “He had breakfast this morning. He’s been asking for you. I had to tell him that lately you’ve been rather… occupied.”

My throat closes.

He’s not telling me Denis is fine to reassure me. He’s telling me Denis is fine and asking for. This is to remind me what’s at stake. He’s showing me the window so I understand exactly how quickly he can close it.

“What else did he ask?” I say, and I hate myself slightly for asking, for needing to know, for giving him the satisfaction of watching the hook set.

“The usual. He wanted to know where Mama was and why she wasn’t coming to play with him,” my father says, placing the words like stones on a scale. “I told him you’d been busy. I told him that enough times in the past year that he seemed to accept it without argument.” Another pause. “He’s a patient child. He gets that from you.”

The back of my eyes burns. I press the heel of my free hand against the table.

“I want to come see him,” I say. “Today, if possible.”

“I understand that,” my father says. “I do. But you’ll appreciate, Pavlina, that yesterday created a number of complications that need to be addressed before we can talk about visits.” His voice stays warm and patient, which is exactly as it always was. “You left in a state of distress. You’re clearly not thinking clearly. I think it would be better for everyone, Denis included, if you took some time to come back to yourself first.”

Not a refusal. Never a refusal. A delay dressed as concern, a postponement wrapped in the language of care. He’s not saying no. He’s saying not yet, and the not yet could last a day or a month, depending on how cooperative I am, depending on whether I behave like a daughter or continue behaving like a person who made a choice.

“I understand,” I say. The words taste like ash in. “I just miss him.”

“I know you do,” my father says, and for one half-second, the warmth in his voice sounds almost real. “That’s precisely why I need you to be sensible right now. Denis needs his mother to be well. He needs you to be making good decisions.” A pause. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I understand exactly what he’s saying. Come back. Stop this. The price of Denis is compliance. It has always been compliance, and it will always be compliance. The only thing that changes is what he needs me to comply with.