AllFreeNovel
Share Us
3
Sadie
Istared so long at the burning candles that some of them melted all the way down, the hot wax spilling down the brass chandelier to the floor. The flames blurred together, and that’s how I knew I was crying. I had no idea what time it was, or how long I’d been there at the old, abandoned house.
Yes, that’s what I felt like. Abandoned.
But it was utterly and completely selfish of me to think like that. Mikhail’s parents were dead. He didn’t really talk about them a lot, and he’d only seen them a handful of times since they’d sent him over here to go to school at Tides, which was where we met.
But they were his parents. And it was all so sudden that he had to be in some sort of shock. I should’ve done something more for him. Been a better comfort. Instead, I’d pouted like some kind of baby and made him apologize to me, over and over.
Poor Mikhail.
I blew out the candles so I wouldn’t burn the place down, leaving one until I could switch my flashlight on. I realized with a start that it was growing light outside, the blue of dawn warning me that the sunrise wasn’t too far behind. My mom would be worried.
I shuddered at the thought of coming home to find that something had happened to her. She was all Jonathan and I had. As much as I’d been pushing for Mikhail to get a place with me instead of living with my brother, I didn’t think I’d be able to move out of my mom’s house so easily. She needed us just as much as we needed her. She would be all alone there without me.
I couldn’t help thinking about my dad. He’d died in a logging accident when Jonathan and I were five. I had very few memories of him, and the few that I did I guarded fiercely. The smell of wood chips and sawdust, for example. The softness of flannel in the shirts he would always wear, sleeves rolled up to bare his forearms. My mom laughing at him all the time — laughing more than she ever did anymore.
My mom had taken it hard, of course. She had twins to take care of by herself. She had to get a job, and she got one at Tides Academy. She negotiated her salary so that Jonathan and I could go there for a greatly reduced cost. When we were old enough, she encouraged us to take advantage of the full experience by staying there like the rest of the students. It was a fancy school for fancy families. My mom was just trying to get us to build friendships with people who had more assets and connections than we did so that maybe we wouldn’t have to struggle as much as she had someday.
And that’s where we’d met Mikhail.
It gutted me to think of him losing both of his parents in a single instance.
I pulled the rest of my clothes on, trying to adjust to the dull ache between my legs. I’d lost my virginity — something I’d been eager to be rid of at my age — but I also felt like I’d lost so much more.
I left the old house behind me like I was leaving what had been possible in my life.
The sun was coloring the sky by the time I reached home, but I was able to slip in without my mom noticing. I could hear the shower running in the bathroom, and I was thankful she had started to get ready without looking in on me first. I tossed my clothes into the closet and got into my pajamas as if I’d been here the entire night.
Lying down in my bed, I drew the covers over me. I wondered where Mikhail was — if his plane was halfway to Moscow already. I hoped he was getting some rest. I needed a little sleep too. My first class wasn’t until noon, so I could get in a nap before I had to be on campus.
I arranged my pillows in just the way I preferred them, settled in …
And wept.
* * *
The next few months passed in a blur. I felt like I was neither sleeping nor awake. I tried to keep up with my regular routine, but even that got too difficult. I was a shadow of myself, and everyone noticed.
At first, my mom accepted the excuse that I wasn’t feeling well.
“You don’t seem like you’re running a fever,” she said, pressing the back of her hand to my forehead while she checked her own with the other hand. Her hair had turned gray so long ago that my memories tried to get me to believe it had always been that way.
Now, I understood it was grief over losing my dad.
I wondered stupidly if my blonde curls would turn gray over losing Mikhail.
Because he never called when he got to Moscow. When I tried to call him, it went immediately to voicemail. Texts didn’t get delivered. I searched “plane crashes Pacific Ocean” more times than I wanted to admit, but nothing came up.
For the first week, I figured he was so busy with funeral arrangements and greeting friends of his parents and relatives that he hadn’t had a chance to let me know how he was doing.
The second week, I wondered whether he’d lost his phone. Or maybe it had stopped working in Russia, he’d had to get a new one, and he didn’t have my number saved.
The third week, I decided that he was occupied learning the tools of the trade to do what needed to be done with his parents’ business.
In the fourth week, however, I was faced with the possibility that perhaps Mikhail had found much better ways to spend his time than worrying about some small-town girl like me. That he’d found women who were better than me in every way. That he’d promised he’d be back just to keep me from making a scene.
