The bread is still warm in my hands. All I’ve had today is some glue-like oatmeal and a lukewarm cup of Italian wedding soup. It feels like just the thing youshouldbe having on a dank, gloomy snowy day.
I take a bite.
Moroslav leans in, eyebrows raised. “And?”
I chew, covering my mouth with my hand. “S’good,” I manage, almost choking.
Itisgood. Rich and dense and heavily sweet.
And I feel…better.
Warm.
More…alive, somehow. If that’s possible. Like I can feel the color as it creeps back into my cheeks.
All the while, Moroslav is watching me, as carefully and intently as if he’s going to grade my performance. But gradually, he smiles. Grins, really.
“See?” He says, shaking a finger at me. “See? I knew she would do well with it.” He laughs, surprisingly loud. “I knew it.”
Knock knock.Again, I jump at the sound behind me, but this time it’s not one of my peers here to gesture lewdly at my visitor, but Grace, one of the counselors.
“Five minutes ’til group, Gwenna,” she says. “Might want to say your goodbyes.”
I nod, and look back across the table. Moroslav’s hands are folded again, his gaze casting around the room, taking it all in. “You stay here how long?”
“You mean…how long have I been here?” I ask. “Or how much longer am I staying?”
He looks back at me with a bashful smile, shaking a gentle finger at me. “The verb tenses! Always get me. You will be here how much longer, I mean to ask.”
“I…”
I don’t really have an answer.
There reallyisn’tan answer.
And maybe it’s the warmth in my body from the bite of kulich, maybe it’s session with Jessie earlier today, maybe it’s the shakeup to what has been a mind-and-body-numbing routine of gray day after gray day, but a single thought reverberates in my mind:
What if I just left?
No one could stop me. I’m over eighteen. There’s no involuntary hold on me; it wouldn’t even be against medical advice, not if what Jessie the therapist told me is really true. I could just march over to the sign-in desk, tell Linda the receptionist I’m withdrawing, and…
…and what? Call an Uber? Hitch a ride with a Russian fencer I barely know?
The excitement fades as swiftly as it rushed in. Am I stupid? I have no money, no useful, employable skills.
I have nowhere else to go.
“I ask because.” Moroslav’s voice is lower now, richer, and he’s leaned in so close I have to lean in towards him, too, to hear it. “I would like to see you again, Gwenna.”
His words ring in my ears. I’m so taken aback that I can’t even process a response.
And I don’t have to.
The door bangs—the front door, the entrance door, and figures spill into the reception room in a tumult.
“Get,” grits a low voice, “away from her.”
Kingston.
