Page 73 of The Breath Before Forever

“Ma’am,” interjected the driver behind the wheel of the town car, “did you say the gate would be open or closed when we arrived?”

“I’ll let you go,” Claire said, having not heard Vera’s driver quietly announce their arrival to the Dubna estate.

Vera, who had gone as far as calling her mother knowing there were only minutes to spare before she’d finally be home, managed to distract herself from a panic attack by doing so. Yet, she’d also forgotten how close she was to the house.

But there it was.

Looming at the top of the hill, the colonial seemed to stare Vera down from its higher position. What little snow remained only served to leave small slushy banks at the end of the driveway, but even the grass had started to pop green in places. Overhead, the bright afternoon sky scattered with fluffy white clouds seemed to stretch on forever and ever beyond the hills.

More interesting were the beauties.

Both adult lilacs at the gate were in full bloom with large white blossoms she could practically smell through the windows of the car. She almost wished that she had a pair of shears to take a few cuttings up to the house, but maybe someone else had already done so.

If not, that was the very first thing she planned to do.

“Ma,” Vera said quietly.

Even though she hadn’t responded yet to her driver.

“Yeah, Vera?”

“You’re right—Russia is beautiful in the spring. It’s a great time to come.”

Claire took more than a few seconds to reply, but the murmurings on the other end of the call said her mother had relayed the information to Demyan, as well. “We’ll have to figure something out, won’t we?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Give Vas my love,” Claire said.

“I will.”

Once Vera had ended the call, she found the driver’s expectant gaze searching for hers in the rearview mirror. “Ma’am?”

“It’s Vera.”

The man, who wore a standard black suit as a uniform, and topped it off with black leather gloves and a cap with his employer’s logo on the front, smiled thinly.

“Mrs. Pashkov, is the gate supposed to be opened or closed?”

She gave him some credit when he didn’t call her a ma’am for the third time, but he remained as formal as he possibly could without being rude all the same.

So was life.

A give and take.

“It’s unlocked,” she said, offering nothing else.

Actually, before he could reply, Vera had already unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the rear passenger door. The man rushed to do the same, and join her, but as his door swung open, she waved a hand at him, and rolled her eyes.

“Relax, I’m just opening the gate,” she told him.

He remained frozen half in and out of the car with one hand on the top of the opened door, watching as Vera unlatched the heavy iron gate that had been repainted a bright white recently. There were still paint splatters on the ground, but the white on the metal had been dry.

With both Beauty of Moscows hugging either side of the gate attached to stone and mortal pillars, the new paint made it stand out even more against the backdrop of the property it was meant to protect. For some reason, the color made it seem less threatening to Vera’s eye and more welcoming. She didn’t know if that had been Vaslav’s reasoning for whipping out the paint and brush, or if he just meant to give Vera something new to see when she arrived home.

It was a nice change.

Not that it made up for anything.