Page 156 of Cruel Demands

When I point at it, he says sharply, “Do not.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

The second is better.

We sit at the kitchen table with a plate between us. I pour too much syrup over mine. Mikhail watches.

“What?”

“That amount is unnecessary.”

“I’m pregnant.”

“That is not a universal defense.”

“It is currently my favorite one.”

I take a bite. It’s warm, pillowy, and exactly what I wanted. My eyes close. Mikhail’s posture relaxes as if he has personally prevented a crisis.

“Good?” he asks.

“Very.”

He takes one for himself.

For several minutes, the house is quiet except for forks against plates. It could almost be ordinary. A man cooking for a woman he loves. A baby neither of them planned. A kitchen lit warmly after midnight.

Domestic bliss.

“So, you can play piano, you can make pancakes. What else can you do?”

He looks at me with a prideful expression. “I do not know that I have much else hidden, but I can cook. A man who cannot feed himself is only a well-dressed child.”

“That sounds like something Nikita would say.”

Nikita appears in the doorway wearing a robe and an expression of suspicion. “That is because I did.”

She sits beside me. Mikhail places a pancake on her plate without asking. She accepts it as her due.

The three of us remain there long after the pancakes should have been finished. Another batch appears. Tea replaces coffee. Nikita wanders away once, returns, complains that we have ruined her sleep, and then remains at the table anyway. Outside the windows, black slowly gives way to charcoal gray. Eventually she disappears upstairs again and returns carrying a small parcel wrapped in tissue.

“What is that?” Mikhail asks.

“Not for you.”

She hands it to me. Inside is a folded baby blanket. The wool is soft but worn thin in places, pale blue with a darker border stitched around the edges.

I run my thumb over it. “It was his,” Nikita says.

I look at Mikhail.

“You kept this?” he asks her, his voice gruff in a way that sounds like it may be guarding tears.

Nikita gives him an impatient look. “Of course I kept it. He was wrapped in it when I brought him home,” she tells me. “He screamed for three months.”

“I did not.”