“And if she doesn’t come?”
“Then she doesn’t come.”
He studies me for a second, then nods like he expected that answer before he asked.
By ten-thirty that night I’m already on the river road behind the Markov property.
Mikhail wanted two cars farther back. I let him have them, mostly because it keeps him quiet. The road is nearly empty at this hour. Wet gravel, bare trees, black water beyond them. The old chapel sits somewhere behind the wall to my left, hidden by stone and dark branches.
The side path is harder to see at night, which is exactly why it matters.
I stand beside the car with my coat on and my hands in my pockets and look at the wall like I can force it to give me an answer.
Eleven comes. Then passes.
She doesn’t come.
I check my phone once. Nothing.
She told me not to call. I told her not to answer unless she had to. Now I’m standing in the cold pretending I’m a man who can wait patiently while the minutes keep moving and the wall stays blank.
It occurs to me, not for the first time, that this is a bad idea.
Not because of danger. I’ve made peace with that as a permanent feature of my life.
Because of her.
Because if she doesn’t come, I’ll still go back tomorrow thinking about the fact that she tried to reach for me and then didn’t, or couldn’t.
And if she does come, I have no idea what I’m going to do with the sight of her once she’s in front of me.
Eleven-ten.
Eleven-fifteen.
At eleven-twenty, I start to think Mikhail was right.
Maybe she can’t get out.
Maybe Sergei posted someone outside her door.
Maybe she read leave the children behind and decided I’d finally lost my mind.
Maybe I had.
I stay anyway.
The river wind is hard enough now to cut through the wool of my coat. Somewhere behind me, one of Mikhail’s cars shifts slightly in place. No headlights. No movement at the wall.
Then, just as I’m about to admit to myself that she isn’t coming, I see motion at the break in the stone.
A dark figure slips through the narrow opening beside the cemetery wall and stops just inside the shadow of the trees.
For one second, it’s only a shape.
Then she steps forward into what little light the road gives her.
Katerina.
