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In the dream, I hear myself scream her name again. I see myself rushing across the bathroom, slipping in the water on the floor, and falling hard to my knees, reaching for my wife.
I am in my own body again, dragging her out of the tub into my arms, kissing her, trying to breathe for her, calling her name.
Trying to bring her back to me.
In the dream, I don’t see the box on the countertop or the oblong plastic shape next to it. I don’t find it the next morning. After Vera’s body is removed from the house, hold it in my hand and see the thing that turned my heart to stone.
I see nothing except my wife, bloodied and dead in my arms. I feel nothing except for the vast certainty that someone must have killed her, that this is someone else’s fault.
That my wife cannot have taken her own life.
In the dream, no one comes rushing in to the sound of my screams. No one tries to pull Vera from my arms, or comforts me or tells me that it must have been suicide, that there’s been no break-in, no sign of anyone else, that there’s no possible way even the best of assassins could have left absolutely no trace at all.
In the dream, I’m left alone, tears running down my face for the first time in my adult life as I cradle my wife’s body in my arms, my eyes tightly shut, whispering her name. Begging for her to come back to me. Telling her that I’ll make it up to her, that I’ll change everything, that I’ll be whatever she needs me to be.
If only she’ll come back to me.
For a brief moment, I think I feel her stir. I think I hear her whisper my name, but it isn’t Vera’s voice that I hear.
I open my eyes, and it’s Caterina’s bloodless body and pale face that I see, her body limp in my arms, scattered with a thousand cuts.
My second wife, as dead as the first.
Another woman that I’ve failed.
She opens her cold, dead eyes and whispers my name.
VIKTOR
Isit bolt upright in bed, gasping.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had a nightmare like that. The waking life of apakhanhas enough fodder for nightmares. I rarely have them when I sleep. In fact, with the exception of the first months after Vera’s death, I haven’t been known to have them at all.
But things are different now, I suppose.
I run my hand over my forehead, wiping away a cold sweat. The room feels dark and close and hot despite the chill, and I throw the covers back, sliding out of bed and heading for the door without even really knowing where I’m going. I tell myself that I’m going to the kitchen for a glass of water, but my feet lead me in a different direction instead.
Down the hall, to Caterina’s room.
To my wife’s room.
I tell myself that I’m only going in to check on her, that I want to see for myself that the dream was only that—a dream. That she’s alive, sleeping soundly and safely in the room she was given, that tomorrow I’ll begin the process of figuring out how to move us to a new safe house, and all will be well.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness in her bedroom. I can see the slender shape of her under the quilt, so different from Vera. A difference that I like because it means that I rarely think about my first wife when I’m in bed with the second.
When I do, it’s not to compare body types.
I like how delicate Caterina feels in my hands, how fragile. I like her small breasts and small stiff nipples, the narrow curve of her waist, the way I can squeeze all of her hips in my hands. The angles of her face, her wide eyes. Everything about her turns me on, makes me wildly aroused in a way that I hadn’t known I could feel any longer.
She might not have thawed my heart, but she’s awakened a heat in me that I thought was equally dead.
The former is so long frozen that nothing could ever change it. Not after what I’ve seen. Not after what happened.
I can’t go through that again.
I won’t.
Slowly, I step closer to the bed, so that I can see the outline of her face in the cool darkness. She makes a small sound in her sleep, and I stop in place, feeling myself grow even harder. My cock had stiffened just from looking at the shape of her in the bed, aching after so many days away from her. That small sleepy moan sends a fresh pulse of blood to my groin, the aching sweeping through me as I look down at my wife.
