Page 60 of The Promise

What did it matter?

“Karine, dear?” In her distraction, Karine hadn’t noticed Masha coming to stand in the open bathroom door. She met Masha’s eyes in the mirror, already shaking her head when she asked, “Sweetheart, are you okay?”

No.

Not at all.

“I don’t want him to go,” she said softly.

Her lips quivered.

Even her hands shook.

Karine just felt ... pitiful. All over, from top to toe. She didn’t even want to be stared at by her long-time friend, and caregiver.

Masha inched forward, opening her arms to offer comfort. Not that Karine took it. In fact, she slipped around the woman when she came too close, and darted for the door where she could see the safety of the bed willing to greet her, and take it all away.

She still heard Masha behind her, though, and what she said.

“I know you don’t want him to go, Karine, but he has to. We don’t always get to do just what we want, and it’s okay if you don’t understand it, but it won’t change what happens. Pretending doesn’t make it go away.”

But it did.

It had.

For a while.

• • •

Karine refused to leave her room all morning, dreading that first step out to face the day more and more with every passing second. The day that would end with Roman gone.

She’d somehow convinced herself that if she stayed in the bedroom, then she could just keep pretending he never left. That he was working—doing something important in another part of the home or property.

Reality had never been a very fun place for Karine to be. Masha knew her too well, and even though she called Karine out earlier in the bathroom, it still wasn’t enough to stop her from doing what she had always done when things were just too much.

Masha had left the room to go take care of the laundry—only after Karine insisted she would be fine by herself.

When a knock rattled against the bedroom door, she didn’t know who was waiting on the other side. Masha would have walked right in. She stayed quiet when a part of her dared to hope it was Roman.

Because at the very same time, she hoped it wasn’t.

When Karine didn’t respond to the knock, the door opened slowly with a quiet, “I do know you’re in here. Masha told me so.”

At the sound of Claire’s voice, Karine sat up in the bed, still surrounded by the sheets and pillows from the night before. She hadn’t even let Masha turn over the sheets and make the bed pretty and inviting again. At the sight of Roman’s mother standing in the open doorway, a vicious relief pulsed in her heart.

It wasn’t Roman.

Even though she had desperately wanted it to be, and it hurt that it wasn’t—that was fine. It meant one thing, and that was most important. She didn’t have to say goodbye.

Yet.

The whisper in her heart was cruel.

But not wrong.

“Can I come in—you don’t mind, do you?” Claire asked, not actually waiting for a response, and entering the room anyway. “I wondered where you were when you didn’t come down for breakfast.”

“I didn’t mean to worry you.”