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He folds the page but keeps it in his hand.
“You’ve had a difficult day.”
“My security system was defeated by a red button and a wooden carrot.”
“A useful penetration test.”
I remove the old tape and check the incision. The skin remains closed and the bruising has faded.
“You’re fine,” I say.
“You sound disappointed.”
“Why should I be?”
He watches my hands. “Misha asked for me?”
I smooth fresh tape along his side. “He asks for jam. It doesn’t make jam his father.”
The word falls between us.
Alexei says nothing.
I reach for the shirt lying beside him. When I lift it, a folded paper slips from the breast pocket and lands near my knee.
Three crayon figures stand beneath a blue sky. Mama has green eyes. Misha holds the yellow car. The tall man beside us wears black and has a line through one eyebrow.
My fingers stop on the page.
The drawing is clumsy but clear. Misha has placed Alexei beside me, with our arms touching. To him, this is a family.
Alexei’s hand closes over the paper beside mine.
“He puts me with you because he knows what you won’t say.”
16
VERA
Alexei’s words follow me all the way to the winter garden.
I need space from him, from Misha’s drawing, from everything I’m being made to feel at once.
Guards wait at every turn. Someone is always asking whether Misha has eaten, slept, played, or smiled. Strangers fold his clothes into drawers and fill his shelves with books and toys.
There are too many schedules, access cards, rules, and careful hands arranging a life around my son as if he has always belonged here.
Worst of all, Alexei fits inside it. I need ten minutes without him or anyone watching me.
The winter garden is the one place where no one needs anything from me.
I take the glass corridor beside the pool, pass the closed playroom and a guard, then step outside. The cleared path leads to the greenhouse, though fresh snow already covers the stones.
Snow presses against the glass roof, but orange trees stand in clay tubs along the tiled path, their leaves dark and glossy beneath the lamps. Winter roses crowd the low beds beside white cyclamen, and a narrow bench sits near the far wall, facing the black trunks and frozen ground beyond the greenhouse.
A red wool scarf is tied around the backrest. The bright color against the pale flowers makes the place appear occupied. I bend to look closer and find CARA stitched into one end.
Misha is with Oksana in the playroom, building a garage from blocks and spoons. I told him I needed ten minutes. He asked whether ten minutes was longer than a bear story, then made me promise to return before the yellow car needed fuel. I promised and left before he could add another condition.
