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“Death?” I mumble. I hold back the urge to arch a brow. I’ve seen just how much death she should be “good with.”
“No,” she says. “Not death, per se. Just the sensitivity that should come with it. I’ve buried two parents now, and I didn’t cry at either one of their funerals. I didn’t even go to my mother’s.”
“Why not?”
She shrugs. “I was only nine when she died. I guess I was more interested in playing with my dolls. I didn’t really process that it was a permanent sort of thing, anyway.” She scowls when she sees my jaw drop. “You don’t need to feel sorry for me. She wasn’t really cut out to be a mother.”
“Still, it can’t have been easy.”
She lifts her eyes to mine, and for just a second, I glimpse a flash of her inner trauma. Scars seen from a distance, but ugly and twisted enough to trigger a moment of sympathy pain.
“I had Ilarion,” she says softly. “He made things easy for me.”
It’s the first thing she’s said that makes her feelhuman. It’s also the first time I realize that her love for Ilarion goes far deeper than I realized. It’s just hidden behind a veneer of aloof disinterest.
“I wish Celine were here with me,” I admit. We finally have some common ground and I'm going to take advantage. “Sometimes, I don’t realize how much she supports me, until she’s not around to do it.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Mila suggests. “Relying on other people is a good way to get—to be disappointed.”
To get hurt.Those were the words she’d just avoided saying. And it begs the question: how many people have hurt her?
Enough to have broken the naive little girl who used to play with dolls, clearly.
Mila clears her throat, an obvious ploy to change the subject. “Do you really want me to choose the flowers?”
“I…” I trail off as I continue staring at the sunflowers. They’re pretty, but altogether too happy a flower for a funeral. “You’re right. I should be the one to choose them.”
And then I burst into tears.
It’s a pattern I’ve been dealing with over the last twenty-four hours: I’m fine, I’m handling it all, and then I’m not. It’s just worse right now because I’m in public.
A few heads swivel in my direction, but I can’t stop the shaking sobs from pouring out. The dam is broken, and I have enough experience to know that trying to stop the tears will only make them come harder.
“Blyat’,” I hear Mila mutter under her breath as she steers me to a secluded corner of the store.
She sits me down in a cushioned chair beside a large clay pot filled with lilies. “Everyone here probably thinks I’m crazy,” I mumble once I’ve exhausted Mila’s tissue supply.
“Oh, fuck them.” She rolls her eyes, pulling up a chair next to me. “Caring about what other people think is a waste of time.”
I glance at her sidelong. The question has been on the tip of my tongue this whole time, but now it feels more appropriate to ask. “Mila, why are you here?”
“You’d prefer to be alone?”
“No, I mean, why did you come out with me today? You don’t even like me.”
“I don’t like anyone,” she says, like it’s a self-evident fact. In a way, it is. “So don’t take that personally. And as for why I came with you today…” She sighs. “No one should have to be alone in their grief.”
“Is that code for ‘my brother made me’?” I guess with a pained laugh.
She smiles. “Both things can be true at the same time.”
I gnaw at the inside of my cheek and pick the beds of my nails simultaneously. All my nervous habits coming to play at once. “Your brother knows what he’s doing, right?”
She nods with understanding of the question behind the question. “You’re worried he won’t be able to rescue your sister.”
“And my dad,” I remind her. “I want them both back.”
She nods again, her expression falling back into impassivity. “If anyone can get them back, it’s Ilarion.” She says it like she believes it. That makes me believe it, too.
