“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “My father wants me at the table, so I’m at the table. He wants the children seen, so they’re seen. He wants Arkady entertained, so here we are.”
There is a bitterness in it that feels old.
I look at her son. He’s still standing close to her side, pretending not to listen and listening to every word. The little girl is staring at a gull like she wants to challenge it personally.
“How long has he been doing this?” I ask.
Katerina knows what I mean. “With Nikolai? Long enough.”
I nod once. That’s all I trust myself to do.
Because now I understand what I’m looking at. Sergei brought the boy into the council room to let people see him. Today he puts Katerina beside Arkady in daylight, in public, in a place where anyone passing can read the scene and repeat it later. He’s building something. Respectability. An alliance. A fence around a problem.
Her.Maybe the children too.
Sofia looks up at me. “Are you angry?”
I look down at her. “Why?”
“Because grown-ups get very still when they’re angry, and you got very still.”
Katerina mutters, “Please stop being observant for five minutes.”
Sofia ignores her. “Well?”
I answer her because children deserve answers when they ask clean questions. “Yes.”
“With Mama?”
That almost makes me laugh. “No.”
“With the birds?”
“Not yet.”
She seems satisfied with that.
Nikolai finally speaks. “Arkady smells bad.”
Katerina closes her eyes for one second.
I say, “That’s because he’s a piece of shit.”
Katerina looks at me sharply. “Don’t tell him things like that.”
“Why? It’s accurate.”
“He’s four,” she says, shaking her head.
“He noticed on his own,” I say, before turning to Nikolai. “But you’re right. I’m sorry. We don’t use language around here.”
Katerina still looks pissed off. She hates that because she knows I’m right.
A couple passes behind us, glances at the children, at Katerina, at me, and the man smiles.
“What a lovely family,” he says to no one in particular.
Then they keep walking.
