I stepped back from the door on unsteady legs.
I wanted to know more.Had to know more.But if I stayed any longer, I might have gone inside and done something I could not yet survive the consequences of.
The next evening I found Rasputin by the stables.
He stood with one shoulder against the fence, a cigarette between his fingers, watching one of the horses circle the paddock.Dusk had already deepened the sky to a bruised purple.The air smelled of hay, damp earth, and the first warning of snow.
He looked at me once as I approached and sighed through his nose.
“What happened?”
“Why do you assume something happened?”
“Because you have that look about you.Like you’re deciding whether to commit murder.”
I stopped beside him and stared through the fence rails without seeing anything.
“Did you know?”I asked.
The cigarette paused halfway to his mouth.
“Know what?”
“That he bought her.”
The silence that followed was answer enough.
I turned to him.“How long?”
His jaw worked once before he said, “Long enough.”
“You never told me.”
“It was before you were born.You were a child.”
“I’m not a child now.”
“No.”He flicked ash into the mud.“Now you’re old enough to understand what knowing does to a person.”
There was no comfort in that.No lie offered to soften the edges.That was not how Rasputin loved.He gave truth cleanly, even when it hurt.
I leaned both forearms on the fence and looked out at the horse.It moved in a wide dark circle, breath pluming white in the cold.
My mother had been bought.
Not courted.Not won.Not cherished.
Bought.
Folded into our house like some exquisite object my father had decided to own.
The pressure in my chest became something hotter.Darker.More useful.
I said, “I’m going to kill every man I find doing that.”
Rasputin did not laugh.
He only studied me with that unreadable stillness of his and said, “You’ll run out of bullets before you run out of men.”