AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Well, it’s your decision.” But it’s obvious to anyone with eyeballs that she’s desperate to find out.
I watch her running around the kitchen with her pink apron, bare face, bare feet, and a string of pearls around her neck. The woman can’t help but maintain a touch of class at all times.
I’ve grown used to Nessa living with us, to her being here when I come home. But I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be this close with my own mother. How wonderful would it be to be able to call her up and share details of my pregnancy with her? How wonderful would it be to watch her get excited with me, to offer unsolicited advice, to share stories from when she was pregnant with me?
For a moment, I try to imagine what that would feel like. But it’s like running into a brick wall again and again. It hurts and it’s pointless.
There’s no way I can imagine Jillian being excited about my pregnancy. I can’t imagine Jillian being excited about anything. Certainly nothing that has to do with me.
Suddenly, there’s a hand on my shoulder. I jerk upright and my eyes focus on Nessa. “I’m sorry—I startled you.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m sorry. I was thinking.”
“About?”
“About… my mom, actually.” I shake my head. “It’s stupid. I was just imagining a world where she might care about me and the babies and… Never mind. It was silly.”
She leaves her pot of stinking stew and joins me at the kitchen island. “Oh, honey, it’s a perfectly natural thing to want your mother around when you’re having your first baby. I felt the same way when I was pregnant with Maksim.”
“Was your mother around for his birth?”
“No,” she says regretfully. “She passed away eight months before he was born. Cancer. She was diagnosed thirteen years earlier. Went into remission three times. The fourth time the cancer came back, she decided not to undergo treatment. She said, ‘Some battles aren’t meant to be won.’”
“Nessa, I’m so sorry.” I place my hand over hers.
She gives me a sad smile. “She didn’t know she was going to be a grandmother. When she passed away, even I didn’t know I was pregnant. I found out a few weeks after her funeral. But in a strange way, it felt good. Almost like the universe was offering me a lifeline. I had lost my mother, but here was another life that I could devote myself to.”
It’s such a Nessa thing to say that I smile. She is so devoted to everyone in her life. I wonder if anyone was willing to devote themselves to her in the same way.
“Nessa, can I ask you a personal question?”
She smiles and nods. “Of course.”
“Did you ever consider just leaving your husband?” I ask. “I mean, you’re an amazing woman. You could have found a man who actually made you happy.” She hesitates for a moment, so I add, “Whatever you tell me stays between us. I won’t even breathe a word to Misha.”
She stirs the sludge in the pot for a while, not saying anything. “I’ve never told anyone this before,” she admits at last. “But since you asked… There was a man once. I was in love with him. Very much in love.”
“Don’t tell me you were forced to break up with him because you were given to Misha’s father.”
“Oh, no,” she says, her eyes turning fondly back into the past. “I met him years after I married Maksim Senior.” I try to control my expression, but I’m not sure I’m doing the best job. She takes one look at my contorted face and laughs. “Didn’t expect that, did you?”
“Not even a little bit, if I’m being honest.”
Mostly because I would have assumed her husband would have killed her for even looking at another man.
“Everyone assumes I followed all the rules,” she says. “But some rules are worth breaking.”
“I completely agree. Tell me everything.”
Nessa laughs, and for a split second, I see a much younger woman tucked away in the lines of her face. A happier woman, if only she’d been allowed to take a different route through life.
“His name was Anisim. He was a Vor to my husband. It took ten years and three children before I realized that the reason Anisim was rude to me every time we had an interaction was because he was attracted to me. He didn’t want Maksim Senior to know.” She sinks into the seat next to me, my hand still clasped in hers. “It—the inevitableit—happened one night while my husband was on a business trip in Russia. Anisim was tasked with protecting the house while he was gone. We ran into each other in the wine cellar late at night and… Well, one thing led to another.”
“Oh my God!” I cry “This is so romantic.”
“The beginning certainly was,” Nessa says with a little sigh. “Even if the ending wasn’t.”
“Nessa…”
