Page 133 of Cruel Demands

My mother smiles, sharp and private. “I lost my son. That is when I learned the lesson.”

Her words sink in my chest, and I look down at the ground for a moment, feeling the gravity of everything my father has taken from my mother. Feeling the gravity of what she thinks of me.

Taylor nods slowly. Then she looks at the ruined dumpling in her hand. “I think I may have sacrificed this one.”

Nikita examines it. “It is beyond saving.”

“Finally, something in this house is allowed to leave.”

My mother laughs again. Taylor does too. The sound fills the little kitchen as naturally as warmth from the stove. My mother bumps Taylor’s hip aside and demonstrates how to fold the dough. Taylor protests that she was doing it exactly that way. My mother tells her she has the hands of a bureaucrat. Taylor says that is offensive to both her and bureaucrats.

They fit. Taylor belongs nowhere in this house. She is too bright for it. Too loud. Too American. She insults the furniture, argues with the guards, and refuses help even when she is hopelessly lost. And yet here she is, standing beneath my grandmother’s copper pots with flour on her face, making my mother laugh.

Not visiting. Not intruding. Fitting. The sight reaches somewhere inside me that I have kept locked longer than Taylor has been alive. My mother looks over Taylor’s shoulder and meets my eyes. Her expression changes. Only slightly. Enough.

She knows what I’m seeing. She knows what it costs me.

I clear my throat. “What are you doing?” I ask.

Taylor looks toward the doorway and sees me. Her smile changes. It becomes more cautious, as though some part of her remembers that she is in my house because someone has taken an interest in hurting her.

“Apparently losing a fight with flour.”

“She is making pelmeni,” my mother says.

Taylor holds up one misshapen piece between two flour-covered fingers. “That’s optimistic.”

“It is recognizable,” I tell her.

“Thank you,” Taylor squeals happily.

“As food,” I clarify. “Not as pelmeni.”

“Oh. Well, you know, in America we have this saying: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I think you should adopt something like that here maybe.”

“In Russian, we have a saying, too: “Vrag soglasitsya, a drug sporit.”

“‘Enemy will agree, but friend argues’?”

“A foe will flatter you, but a true friend will tell hard truths.”

Taylor ignores me, smiling down at the dumpling in her hand, pleased because this one has finally held its shape. I could do something like that with her: make a family that keeps its shape.

Then my stomach growls. I shake my head. The food metaphors are never-ending.

I really am hungry.

34

TAYLOR

By the third week in Mikhail’s house, I’m considering climbing out a window.

Not because I’m being held prisoner. I am definitely Not A Prisoner. Mikhail has made that very clear. I’m free to go anywhere I like. As long as I tell him, take a driver and three guards, and clear my route with Mikhail first.

“I need to leave,” I tell him.

We are in his study because I came looking for him with purpose. I didn’t get lost this time, which feels like a personal achievement.