Page 68 of The Breath Before Forever

“For what it’s worth,” her brother said as Vera reached for the sliding door’s handle, “I’m sorry—you know, that you hurt right now. For any reason. I wish you didn’t hurt.”

“Yeah, me too.” Vera blinked away the tears she’d managed to keep to the privacy of her bed and evening showers. “You were right—this life’s fucking messy.”

18.

“Did you get all your mother’s hydrangeas planted?”

“Have you started to plant the juvenile beauties yet?” Vera returned, referring to the lilacs in terracotta pots that he’d just checked over that morning before leaving the house.

“I promised I wouldn’t without you,” Vaslav said. “And my question wasn’t about me, kisska.”

“I want to come home, Vaslav.”

“Da, yes, I know.”

The silence on the other end of the call extended both ways. He offered his young wife nothing else except he acknowledged her wants and feelings, and in kind, she gave him back exactly the same. Nothing.

A lot of their conversations had gone this unfortunate way since her departure to New York. At first, she’d been more than willing to spend hours on the phone discussing everything and anything she could pull out of him, in between begging for him to let her come home. It seemed like now she had diverted to a new path to make Vaslav suffer for his choices.

She wouldn’t even talk to him.

Not unless required.

“Vera, listen to me—”

“Cut the shit. You know it just makes me more bitter, right?” she asked him then before letting out a weak laugh. “I hate even saying that. Admitting it. I love you, but you’re making it really hard for me to do that right now.”

“There are but a few reasons you want to be in Moscow right now, Vera.”

“And?”

“And not one of them will be fixed or better because you are here,” he said, internally willing it to be the last word he had to make on the topic.

Vaslav wasn’t stupid.

He knew it wouldn’t be the last.

It didn’t matter how true his statement was—or that he could list off every reason she would point to for her need to return and rebuke it with an equally valid reason to say no. She would stay where she was until he considered Russia safe for her to return. There would be no more bombs catching her in the crossfire, or anyone else around her, for that matter.

Things like that took time.

“Fine, Vaslav,” Vera muttered heavily, defeat coloring up her tone. “Do whatever you want—I guess, call me when it’s done? Whatever the hell it is you’re doing day after day without me.”

Nothing good, he wanted to tell her but he didn’t. Nothing half as amazing as what I could be doing at home with you, he could have said, and it would have been the truth.

He also wished for that to be true, but just because he wanted his wife home with him didn’t mean he could allow his feelings to cloud his judgement about what happened in the first place. There was a reason why he sent Vera to New York, and he didn’t intend on bringing her back before he made sure that reason never happened again.

It wasn’t his fault that she couldn’t see this situation from his perspective. Vaslav was to blame for a lot of things, but not that one.

“Could you at least say hi to Hannah for me?” she asked, referencing the only reason he was able to keep her on the phone call for more than a cursory hi and bye. As had happened for their last three conversations after she answered, asked him if he was calling to let her know she could come home, and after he refused, she would simply hang up.

“Otherwise,” Vera continued, “just fuck off.”

Her cold dismissal came with the click of her phone, and then soon after, a dial tone. Interestingly enough, that was the same moment his elevator reached the intended floor he had selected at the beginning of his call. Just as Vera had first picked up the call.

He was left listening to the emptiness on the other end of the line, still hearing Vera’s final fuck you eating its way through his tired brain, and staring at his warped reflection in the widening door panels of the elevator. He stood there long enough after the doors had slid entirely open that they started to close again.

Vera’s anger was justified, too.