Roman is good with them.
Not showy. Not fake. He doesn’t baby them. He just talks to them like they are actual people, and both of them lean toward him as if they’ve been waiting for someone to do it.
Sofia starts first. “Do you know how to sail?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how to drive very fast?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how to fight sharks?”
Roman takes a sip of water. “Not often.”
Sofia nods, satisfied. “I thought so.”
Vika keeps trying to pull the conversation back. She asks him where he summers, whether he prefers Europe, whether he always works this much. He answers politely enough, but not in a way that gives her anything she can hold.
His attention keeps going back to the children.
And once or twice, to me.
That’s worse than if he flirted outright.
At one point Sofia reaches for the breadbasket and nearly tips her water over. Roman catches the glass before it falls, and she says, with great seriousness, “You’re useful too.”
He almost smiles. “I’m relieved.”
Nikolai says, “Sofia thinks everyone belongs to her if they’re nice once.”
“That’s not true,” Sofia says. But the look on her face says something else.
Vika turns her gaze to me.
“What?”
“You’ve barely spoken.”
“I’m eating.”
“That’s unusual.”
Before I can say anything else, Roman says, without looking at her, “Let her eat.”
Vika goes still for half a second. I do, too.
I hate that a small defense from him can still move something in me.
I reach for the potatoes just as a crack splits the air.
For one stupid second, my mind tries to place it somewhere harmless. A branch. A dropped tray. One of the gardeners knocking something over near the hedge.
Then I see the glass beside Roman’s hand burst.
I look up at once.
So does he.
