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“You have to take that for the baby!” Annie exclaimed, rubbing the lace gently between her fingers. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“There is nothing finer than Russian lace,” Zoya sniffed imperiously.
They were at the Baranov estate, going through some baby things Lina had found in the attic. She’d had Peter, the ground’s manager, bring them down for the occasion, and they’d spent the afternoon going through the boxes, drinking tea — or vodka in Lina and Zoya’s case — and dining on Lina’s tea sandwiches.
“I think there’s a picture of me in this,” Kira said.
She got to her feet and left the parlor for the old sitting room. Sure enough, there it was, on the mantle: a photograph of Kira’s parents, Kira bundled in her mother’s arms as her father beamedproudly, the lace christening gown trailing like a fine banner from Kira’s small form.
She smiled at the photograph even as a wave of pain clenched her heart. How she missed them! They’d been such fine parents, gentle but strong, and she wanted nothing more than to feel their guiding hand as she embraced on her own parenting journey with Lyon.
Losing her mother at the age of twelve had been painful, but it had brought Kira and her father even closer. For the fourteen years after her mother’s death, it had been just the two of them with Lina and Zoya in the house, Peter coming and going as he maintained the grounds. They’d made for an unconventional family, but it had been her family, and she’d loved every one of them.
Then she’d married Lyon and her father had been murdered by Musa Shapiev. Nothing had been the same since, though the house stood like a time capsule, unchanged since his death.
“Did you find it?” Annie called from the other room.
“Yes, coming,” Kira called heading back to the parlor.
She would have to do something about the house soon. Although the money from her father’s considerable estate was more than enough to pay the bills and continue Lina and Peter’s generous salaries, it wasn’t fair to leave them here, rattling around in the great old place alone.
It wasn’t fair to the house either. It was a beautiful home that had given her decades of love and shelter. It deserved another loving family.
She sighed, tabling her sorrow at the thought of another child running through its halls. Change was the only constant. This, she knew. But she had had quite a lot of it in the past year, and she was ready for stability.
For peace.
“Here it is,” she said, handing Annie the photo.
“I’d forgotten how beautiful your mother was,” Annie said, staring at the picture. “I was young when she passed away.” She looked at Kira, lowering herself back to the floor and the unopened boxes that awaited. “You look so much like her. I never realized.”
“Do I?” Kira asked, flushing with pleasure.
Annie nodded. “Although you have your father’s eyes.”
“And his death wish,” Zoya muttered.
Kira rolled her eyes. She was used to Zoya’s doom and gloom. “And yet, here I am.”
“You’ve been lucky,” Zoya said.
“We’re not doing this again,” Kira said, opening the next box.
Zoya had made it clear she thought Kira foolish for staying in Chicago while Vadim was still trying to overthrow Lyon in the bratva. Kira had heard her out — Zoya had been like a mother to her, albeit a pessimistic one, since her own mother’s death — but had made up her mind.
She was staying with Lyon. It was where she belonged.
She withdrew a beautiful mobile from the box, a series of birds circling an arm shaped to look like a tree. “I’ve never seen this before,” she said. “It’s so beautiful.”
“Your mother sewed those birds,” Lina said. “While she was pregnant with you.”
Kira looked at her. Lina was the only one who’d been with the family when Kira was a baby. Zoya had come later. “Really?”
The needlework was so detailed, the birds decorated with tiny colored stitches and sequins on their colorful wings.
Lina nodded. “I can still see her sitting by the fire with them in her hands.”
Kira could see it, and for a moment, she felt like the moment was very close, as if she might return to the sitting room and find them still there, her father’s head bent to a book, her mother working on the tiny stuffed birds.
