Page 45 of Arranged for the Russian Pakhan

The tides within my soul keep turning tumultuously, and it leaves me all the more in need of the anchor of my work. I cling to what’s commonplace—the steady ground I’ve already planted my flag in, and the parts of my life so wholly and incontestably known to me that they’re a house I could walk through in absolute darkness.

It’s what I need, with the visceral manner in which these changes are wearing me thin. I’m a little indignant at how much I’m reeling. Frankly, I expect better from myself. Not that my disdain for my own weakness keeps me from tending to myself as I understand I must.

Good thing I know myself extremely well.

That morning, I excused myself from breakfast at the Zakharov manor to have a cinnamon-dusted latté and a pain au chocolat with my sister-in-law, Janella, as used to be a regular refrain for me.

I’d posited that Janella’s café is called “The Great Escape” for a reason. Besides, I’ve always enjoyed symmetry and symbolism, even the more overt kind. There’s something about the idea of it that scratches an itch deep in my mind’s web. I walk in and let the hiss of the espresso machine, quirky furniture, and the cozy, sticky smells of butter and sugar fill me up. My sister-in-law herself is behind the counter. I realize I’ve been too caught up in my wifely bubble the past few weeks when Janella’s face brightens with surprise at the sight of me.

I think of how Nadya had advised me to reroute my attention to what fills my cup instead of poking holes in it and questioning the sturdiness of the cup itself. Once I can make myself move past my baby sister having somehow grown wise whilst apart from me, I can take the wisdom to heart. Mostly.

Fortunately, it isn’t a particularly difficult task to sit at the counter and let warm, sassy Janella catch me up on whatever I’ve missed.

She lets her staff handle the morning rush and caters to me, sensing that I need it, and asks me nothing probing as she does so. I appreciate her more than words can say—the way she fills up my silences, the vacuum where I no longer know how to explain the turn my days and nights have taken, with talk of warm, wonderful things like the new supplier she’s trying out for cardamom buns, and how my brother Iosif burned his hand trying to cook for her, and what I missed at Sunday brunch. I also get some intel from her. She tells me, “Iosif mentioned something about upping security at the estate. Someone tried to move on one of the Yuri distribution routes last week.” It’s a reminder of what got me into this in the first place.

The pick-me-up doesn’t pick me up as much as I’d hoped, but it’s still a blanket splayed out atop thin, exposed skin. By the time I plant a grateful kiss on her cheek and take my leave for the atelier, my feet feel more firmly planted on the ground than they did upon entering.

That’s something, isn’t it?

By the time I get to work, it’s easy enough to dive into the swing of things. The team has already settled into the day’s work without any fanfare. Hanya offers me new findings on the Flemish panel, confirming the presence of smalt beneath the overpainting and pushing back the presumed date by at least a decade, and possibly two. Gloriana promises to parse through proposals for potential new projects while I take a deeper look at the work. And Filip brings me water and my gear when I tell him I’m good on the coffee front, having already gotten my fix for the morning.

For the first few hours of the day, it seems like it’s all going to be just fine. Too much has changed too quickly, but just as much is still the same. There’s a balance. I just have to find it, mostly within myself.

That’s before the nausea resurfaces.

It looks like the way my stomach has been flip-flopping has nothing to do with sitting beside Anton at the breakfast table, mired in domesticity. In my defense, though, I’m not prone to getting sick. My immune system definitely earns its keep. While I may not be a paragon of perfection, I’m an incredibly rational person. And, rationally speaking, it makes more sense for the nausea to be a psychosomatic reaction to a man I’ve grown used to detesting to become the man I love to fuck, argue about literature and philosophy with, and do nothing at all with. More sense that, for instance, a bout of food poisoning.

But the latter is what it’s looking like as the day goes on.

By midday, I have to limit myself to just water. In a rare, unsettling turn of events, not even the work can get me to detach from my body. It’s never failed me before. Today, it does. The small finding ought to have me giddy about the revelation, striving to verify it and break the thrilling news to my client. After all, Hanya’s findings have transformed a painting whose state I was furious about into one that has survived even longer than I’d initially imagined. I should be buzzing about it. Eager to delve into the intricacies.

Instead, I keep losing the thread.

My mind keeps drifting, feeling swollen as a padded room in a psych ward. I’m not a woman who sits around spiraling, doodling my name in my journal with hearts drawn around my paramour’s name. One would say I’m the type to thrive in a political marriage, just based on evidence! But alas, I sit in front of my work, the loupe in my hand, and I can’t focus. I am mooning over a man.

Honestly, it’s no wonder wave after wave of nausea won’t stop rolling through me every time I stand or sit back down.

Just the smell of the banana that Gloriana so sweetly offers me makes my stomach turn. However, no amount of fasting and letting my body take care of itself seems to work. It weighs on me, rendering my mind sluggish.

I’m close to accepting that I may just need to go home.

That’s when I excuse myself to the bathroom to relieve myself from all the excessive hydration I’ve been coping with—and find my underwear spotted with blood.

The discovery makes me freeze in place.

Numbers have never been my forte, but there’s certain math a uterus-having woman is accustomed to crunching, for myriad reasons. It’s an age-old question: When did I last have my period? Admittedly, it isn’t a question I have to ask often. My cycle has been consistent all my life, with the exception of periods of extreme stress. The last time the timetable for it had glitched, I’d been toiling over my graduate school thesis.

And then, almost a month ago, skipped it around the wedding.

What are the chances my period is late—two weeks late, a glance at my phone calendar confirms—a second month in a row?

My stare threatens to burrow a hole in the pristine white grout between the bathroom tiles. I painstakingly planned every aspect of this atelier, including the glossy maroon tiles. That’s who I am: a person who plans with scrupulous detail and executes the vision, with the excellence I demand in return from every aspect of my life.

No. I’m not an idiot. Neither am I naïve.

I’m an adult woman who’s been engaging in some athletic sex with a significantly virile-looking stud of a man. My intuition doesn’t have to scream at me to take the next cautious step. I’m already dialing my assistant’s number.

He picks up at the first ring.