Aunt Rashel was sitting at the small kitchen table, without any light to brighten the room other than the moonlight shining through the back window.
“It was fine,” Nadia said, hesitating in the doorway.
Her aunt was drinking a mug of tea, but not reading or looking at anything. Just sitting there alone.
She didn’t offer for Nadia to join her.
“Where were you?” Rashel asked.
“At a party. At the Markov’s house,” Nadia said.
Momentarily, she debated over admitting it, but Moscow was a small place when it came to the wealthy elite. Her aunt would probably hear of the party either way.
“Why did you go there?” Rashel asked sharply.
“Maxim’s cousin invited us,” Nadia said. “I didn’t know where we were going at first. But it was fine! I talked to Nikolai Markov. He was very...friendly.”
Rashel made a brusque huffing sound.
“Oh yes, they’re very friendly at first,” she said softly. “It’s later the trouble comes.”
“Well, I don’t expect to see him again,” Nadia said, wanting to end the conversation.
Her aunt looked somewhat younger in the pale moonlight. She was not beautiful like Samara, but the sisters had certain features in common—the high, smooth forehead, the wide mouth. Perhaps Rashel even had the same dimples—Nadia wouldn’t know, because she hadn’t seen her aunt smile yet.
“Auntie,” she said, “do you have any old things of my mother’s? Pictures, or books?
“She didn’t leave anything when she moved to Paris,” Rashel said. “She knew she wouldn’t be coming back.”
“Didn’t grandpa and grandma have anything?”
Rashel was quiet for a minute. So long that Nadia thought she wasn’t going to answer. She took a long, slow sip of her tea, then put the mug down heavily.
“There are some albums in the library,” she said at last.
“Thank you,” Nadia said. “I’ll look at them tomorrow. I guess I’d better get to bed now.”
She left her aunt sitting there in the kitchen, alone in the dark.
But she was hardly any more relieved climbing the stairs and walking the long hallway to her mother’s old room, because she knew she’d still have to call Maxim. He was going to be furious that she’d accepted a ride home with Nikolai instead of with him.
She would have preferred to wait until morning to speak to him, when he’d sobered up. But she knew if she didn’t call him that night, he’d accuse her of having “gone somewhere” with Nikolai.
Once she was alone in her room with the door closed firmly behind her, she took out her phone. She hit Maxim’s number and listened to it ring several times before Maxim fumbled his cell out of his pocket.
“Had a nice ride home?” he yelled into the phone, without preamble.
Usually Nadia would have apologized, but her patience was wearing thin these days.
“I’m back home, checking in, and now I’m going to bed,” she said, flatly.
“You’ve been in Moscow five minutes and you’re already trying to fuck the locals,” Maxim said. His voice was even more slurred than before. He had obviously instructed the cab to drop him off somewhere he could get more drinks.
“Oh, please,” Nadia snapped. “I can’t even count how many times I’ve found you at a party with some girl sitting in your lap or whispering in your ear.”
“But I don’t take them home!” Maxim yelled.
Nadia sighed.
