Page 49 of The Lies Between Lovers

He was still working on it.

Mira nodded. “Okay. I’m making Borscht for dinner, if you’re up and around then.”

“Of course, for that. And Mira?”

“Hmm?”

“Irina would have hated all the black,” Vaslav mused, eyeing the bedroom, dark paneling on the walls and equally heavy drapes. But what others probably saw as dark, shaded, and isolated ... he found comforting.

“You told me to do whatever, remember?”

He did, actually. The contractor who came in to do the remodeling job hadn’t exactly been impressed with Vaslav’s lack of interest, but apparently made do with Mira calling the shots.

“But I like it,” Vaslav added with a shrug.

“Sometimes I think it still feels like she lives in here, though.”

Vaslav, pressing his hands into the cotton sheets that still smelled like the fresh breeze that had blown them dry, peered around the space again. He lingered on the doorway that led to the sitting room and library, and the one attached to the bathroom that had also gotten a remodel with a focus on black marble.

Irina had walked through those doors hundreds of times, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t envision it with the changes. The black crown molding with similar woodwork to the bed’s ornate head and foot boards weren’t the same as the smooth, light oak that had once framed the doors high ceilings.

Even the fireplace that hadn’t been changed much at all, one of six in the home, where he’d watched Irina sit and read night after night ... didn’t bring forth the image of her there.

“Does it?” he asked.

Mira lifted one shoulder. “To me ... sometimes.”

“Not me,” he muttered to himself, although Mira had already started to creep out of the room when he was lost in a forgotten time.

He didn’t feel Irina here at all, but Vaslav wasn’t sure how that made him feel. After everything, how should it?

*

The time had crawled past six in the evening when Vera finally darkened Vaslav’s bedroom door. He had nothing better to do than wait for word from Igor in regard to their situation with Viktor, so he opted to follow Vera’s lead and sleep while he had the chance. There was no better time considering his home was the safest place to be at the moment. Rest didn’t come easy to him, but he was just exhausted enough and a little numb from the Vicodin swimming in his veins that when he laid down on the slate gray quilt Mira brought up, he was out.

By the time he’d jerked awake from a dream he couldn’t quite remember, the position of the sun in the sky told him that over half of his day was gone, and he forced himself to get up. After a shower, that took forever to get hot thanks to lack of use, and time spent buzzing his hair to the short crop he preferred before moving on to trimming down his inch-thick beard. He lathered up his face with cream to shave.

Had he been able to see his barber, the job would already be done. He could leave it to grow, but he liked to go into autumn with a clean face that grew in as the weather became colder. Less maintenance throughout the winter.

He’d just tapped off the excess water from a razor when he heard Vera’s call of his name from the next room.

“Mira said you were probably in here?” Vera added when he didn’t answer back right away. “She’s almost finished with dinner and wanted to know if—”

“I’m in the bathroom.”

“What?”

“Come in here,” he called louder, his tone offering no room for argument.

Another second or two passed before he heard the soft patter of bare feet crossing the hardwood floor of the bedroom. Pulling the skin of his throat taut, he’d just started stroking the razor upward under his chin when Vera leaned against the door frame of the bathroom.

For a while, she lingered there silently watching him work away at the facial hair on his throat and under his chin. Meeting her gaze in the mirror, he decided to break the silence first by asking, “Did you sleep well?”

She shrugged under the over-sized cardigan that he easily recognized. It practically swallowed her dainty figure, sweeping down to her mid-thigh while she’d shoved the heavy sleeves up to her elbows. Underneath, the simple cotton shorts and plain white t-shirt looked like something she might have slept in.

“Where did you find my sweater?” he asked.

“In the den.”