Nothing with him is ever only what it looks like.
“How is my boy?” he asks.
Nikolai looks up at him with those steady, storm-colored eyes that still, even after four years, can catch me off guard. Sofia has my face, my drama, my easy smile. Nikolai has my stillness and someone else’s eyes.
Someone else’s everything, some days.
“I’m fine,” he says with the solemnity of a small old man.
Papa’s mouth curves. “Good. Come with me after breakfast. I want to show you something.”
Before Nikolai can answer, I do it for him. “He has a lesson with his tutor.”
Papa looks at me over Sofia’s hair. “Then after the lesson.”
“He’s four.”
“Yes,” he says mildly. “And very bright.”
That’s how it always starts.
My son is too young to understand what’s going on. But I do, and it’s been pressing on me since I made the difficult decision to come back here.
A walk in the garden with Papa and two of his men trailing a polite distance behind. A paperweight placed in Nikolai’s hands. A question asked and praised when answered carefully. A story about our family told in a voice warm enough to sound like love.
Mama comes in a few seconds later and saves me from answering. She’s wearing cream this morning, her hair pinned loosely, no jewelry except the thin gold chain she never takes off. She looks younger now than she did when I came homepregnant and silent, maybe because the children have given her something to hold that’s not regret.
Sofia runs to her, too. Mama lifts her with a small laugh and sits at the head of the table without asking anyone’s permission. Four years ago, that would have meant something. It still does, just more quietly.
My stepmother arrives sometime late.
And when she arrives, she’s dressed beautifully, lips painted, face smooth as polished stone. Vika comes in behind her, equally flawless, equally cold. There is no grief left in Vika’s face now, only shape and calculation. Lev has been dead for years, but in this house, grief is useful for only so long. After that, it becomes another piece of furniture people stop seeing unless they trip over it.
She sees me looking and smiles.
I look away first because I do not have the energy for her before ten o’clock.
That should have ended the speculation.
It did not.
Papa asked for the real name. I did not give it.
Irina looked at me as if silence itself were filth.
Vika never believed me. Not once. Even now, if she catches Nikolai at the right angle, when the light catches his face and turns his eyes that exact impossible color, something ugly flickers through hers. She still thinks the children are Lev’s. Or wants to. In this house, belief is less important than usefulness. A lie that helps someone often lives longer than the truth.
It no longer matters what she thinks.
What matters is that Papa has chosen to take an interest in Nikolai.
That was not true when the twins were babies. Back then, he kept his distance, outwardly offended by my silence and privately curious enough to stay close. He visited the nursery more often than he admitted. He brought toys too expensive for toddlers and stood over their cots with an expression I never learned to read.
Then the children grew.
Sofia remained all delight and noise and reckless affection. She throws herself into every room as if she owns it and expects to be adored. She probably will be, for the rest of her life.
Nikolai became careful.