Wait, I knew that voice.
Dmitri?
I came around the car to see his face, and there he was.
“Dmitri?” I called again, relieved. “How are you…. Wait, it’s you?”
He walked to the driver’s door without answering.
I stood there for another second before I walked over to the door I had left open. I got back into my seat and left my legs hanging over the edge.
“Were you the one who knocked me out?” He was wearing all black, just like the man in the dressing room. “I don’t understand. Was it you?”
“Close the door.”
He started the engine.
“You wanted me to go out shopping, where someone grabbed me in a dressing room, and now I’m waking up in your car, and you want me to just close the door?” I pulled my feet in and shut it. “What is happening?”
But why would he do that? I turned it over and couldn’t find a shape that made sense. The shopping with Caitlin went well. I couldn’t remember when I last felt so free that I began loving being in Dmitri’s life. Not until I was knocked out. Whatever this life was turning into, it was getting worse faster than I could keep up with it.
I sat quietly and let the view calm me. The sun was low over the water, pulling color across the horizon. I have loved sunsets a lot ever since I was young—the one part of the day I could take a fewminutes to watch and forget reality. Back when Mum left, I used to step out and watch the light change, letting myself forget that my father was slowly fading away.
Now I was sitting in a car with a man I didn’t understand, a headache that sat behind my eyes, and the sunset wasn’t doing anything for me.
A mansion came into view in the distance. I could see it, but the road still curved and kept going.
“Where are we going?” I asked, not expecting an answer, but seeing where we were heading put pressure on me.
“I believe you were informed about the dinner.”
Dmitri took a turn, and the sunset disappeared behind us. The road ahead ran beneath a canopy of trees on both sides, and at the end, the outline of a mansion sat waiting. I looked at it, and my stomach dropped.
We were going to dinner with his grandmother. Caitlin told me everything about her being nice, but I needed a minute to get myself together.
I could sit at a table and be whoever this situation needed me to be, but not like this. My head still throbbed, and I was in danger a few hours ago.
Speaking of Caitlin, where was she? Was she okay?
“Can you stop the car?” I asked Dmitri.
“So you can try to run again?”
“I didn’t know it was you. I just need a minute.” My hand found the handle before he slowed and stopped.
The evening air hit me immediately when I stepped out. I leaned against the car and looked at what was left of the sunset, the orange fading at the edges. I wanted it to do something for the noise in my head, but it didn’t.
Dmitri came around and stood in front of me. “We’re late. Get in or walk.”
“I’ll walk,” I said, and meant it in the way you did when youwere past caring about the consequences.
He looked at me for a moment and sighed as if he had run out of calculations and accepted the result. He leaned against the car beside me.
“What do you want, Inna?”
I almost laughed. That was the question he asked me the last time I embarrassed myself in front of him, and when I answered, he refused and walked out. “Stop asking me that. You won’t agree with it, anyway.”
“Maybe it’s not stupid this time.”