Page 72 of The Breath Before Forever

“Well, then you can play a game.”

“What game?” Igor snapped.

Nobody had any patience anymore.

“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” Vaslav said.

But they wouldn’t be catching tigers. Some people might lose some toes. Vaslav still had to work out the details.

“Do it the right way,” Vaslav told his friend, “and you won’t have to worry about another bomb situation again.”

At least now, Igor looked slightly more interested. “Tell me how.”

19.

“I told your father we’ll have to make a trip next year to see it.”

“Maybe,” came the sleepy reply in the background of the phone call. Otherwise, Demyan had remained mostly quiet. “I can’t just go to Moscow—there are other people there who might have something to say about that, Claire.”

“I could make the trip. Who will say something, then?”

“Funny of you to think you’ll make any trips without me.”

“Don’t start with that, Demyan. We know how it goes.”

Vera, who hadn’t entirely been engaged and listening along well with her mother’s attempt at conversation, decided to step in between her parents’ shared barbs to ask, “What did you want to see?”

A sigh answered that.

“I thought you’d be happier because you’re home, but you still sound distracted and sad,” Claire eventually said.

“I’m not home yet.”

Almost.

Claire didn’t argue the point, instead telling her stepdaughter, “Spring, Vera. I was saying how beautiful Russia must be in the spring. It’d be nice to see it firsthand. Next year, even.”

Right, right.

“And then your father had to go ahead and get his opinion in before anyone even bothered to ask him for it,” Claire added.

Although, it didn’t sound like the comment had been meant specifically for Vera. Demyan also picked up on that fact when he muttered in reply, “Quit looking at me like that, dushka.”

“You don’t know that I’m looking at you, Demyan.”

“I can feel your eyes on my back, Claire.”

As nice—or not—as this conversation was, Vera had to be honest and admit that she just wasn’t into it. Usually her parents’ banter made her smile, but the anxious anticipation that had thickened in her chest with every mile that closed between her and Vaslav now took up most of her attention. She couldn’t even breathe around it anymore.

It wasn’t Demyan and Claire’s fault.

It wasn’t even Vera’s.

Except the man who was the cause wouldn’t apologize for his part, and she had yet to decide how to deal with that fact. Some things really did take time. At least, love allowed her the grace of patience to do so.

Or try, anyhow.

“Listen,” she said to her mother, still picking off the remnants of her last French manicure because she needed something to do other than stare out of the windows of her current ride, “I’ll try to call you back later. Maybe tomorrow, but I wanted to visit Hannah, so—”