AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Okay, so I will just demand they speak to me,” he joked.
“Sorry, you are right. I will talk to them.” Her eyes went back to the road.
“I was kidding. Mike was nice to me, and I assume the rest will be the same. He asked if I was the baby’s dad,” he told her in case she didn’t know how many people already knew.
Her eyes turned to him. “What? They will all know by tomorrow.”
“Does he havethe eye?” he questioned her with a laugh.
“Not really, but most in the family can tell. Even I can usually tell, just not apparently about me.” She admitted.
Looking at her in the glow of the dash lights, he couldn’t see that she looked any different then she had before. Though she acted differently with her family, more relaxed.
Pulling into a long driveway, he saw a house in front of him that had almost every light on. As she parked in front of it, the door flew open, and two women came out, hugged Tess, and pulled her into the house. Math grabbed his lone bag from the back seat and headed toward the house alone.
As he approached the door, it opened for him, and a man let him into the house. Seeing the man in the light, he was surprised that he looked so much like Tess. Math would have pegged the guy as a brother, but he knew this was her nephew.
“This way, Mathias. I am Alex; Tessy is my aunt.” The man smiled and led him to a small bedroom upstairs that contained two sets of bunk beds, all with matching homemade quilts. The room was too small for all the furniture and stuff in it, but it looked comfortable.
“Thank you, Alex,” Math said, putting the suitcases on the bed.
“Anytime. We love having Tessy back. She is missed when she is gone,” he stated and led him back downstairs. “The girls are talking. They will talk for a long time.”
Math saw them in the kitchen around the table. They were speaking in Russian and were mostly laughing. He knew that they had just picked up in the middle of a conversation that had been started on the phone at some point. It was something he was getting used to.
When he walked into the room, the women immediately switched to English but continued to talk about Tess’s parents for a few moments.
“Mathias, this is Tasha and Ilya.” Tess pointed at the two women. Tasha was nothing like he thought. She was dark to Tess’s light. Dark brown eyes and almost black hair, she was short and round. But her smile was as large as her niece’s at being together again.
Ilya, on the other hand, was Tess in a few years. She was a mirror into her future. Her hair was still blonde, and her gray eyes were on him. There was no big smile for Ilya, however. She was suspicious of him.
“Hello, Mathias. Thank you for bringing Terezilya to us,” Ilya stated in a heavy accent.
“I am glad she let me,” he admitted, knowing how close she was to traveling there by herself.
“I am surprised she let you as well. Terezilya is stubborn,” Ilya said.
“Like grandpa,” Alex chimed in from the doorway.
“No, no,” Tasha said with a laugh. “Tessy is way more stubborn than grandpa.”
“Hey, I am right here.” Tess rolled her eyes.
“Imagine what we say when you are not,” Ilya joked at her little sister.
“I know what you say when I am not here,” she said to Ilya, then turned to Math, “She sometimes forgets I am on the group texts.”
“I-I cannot keep it all straight,” Ilya stammered out her excuse and then laughed heartily. “I sound like Mama.”
“You always sound like Mama.” Tasha laughed.
“Are you two hungry? Tasha has food,” Ilya stated, jumping up as if she just remembered they hadn’t been fed yet.
“See? Mama.” Tess laughed at her sister.
“I will force-feed you if I have to, Terezilya. Remember how she used to say that to you? Then you would have to sit at the table for hours until everything on your plate was gone,” Ilya said, taking things out of the fridge.
“All the time,” Tess replied quietly.
