There was no point worrying about the long term with Nikolai. For now, it was just casual.
At least, that’s what she tried to tell herself.
Her real feelings were, of course, much stronger than that.
She wanted to go up to her mother’s room, so she could work on the journal again. But as she drew near the staircase, she saw her aunt coming down.
“Hello,” Nadia said pleasantly.
Rashel drew her cardigan tight around her body.
“Did you eat yet?” she asked. “I was going to make borscht for Papa.”
Nadia hesitated, her hand on the railing. She felt a strong pull to get upstairs and immerse herself in the journal. But she’d barely spent any time with aunt Rashel. This could be a good opportunity to talk with her, and maybe learn how to cook a quintessential dish at the same time.
“Could I help you make it?” Nadia asked.
Rashel looked surprised but gave a curt nod.
Nadia followed her over to the kitchen.
Rashel began rummaging around in the fridge and pantries, pulling out the beets, cabbage, potatoes, and beef they would need, then assembling it all on the stone slab countertop.
She brought out a cutting board and a chef’s knife sharpened and re-sharpened so many times that the edge had worn away to a razor’s edge. She washed the potatoes and beets, as well as the half head of green cabbage. Then she handed the lot to Nadia to dice.
Nadia gripped the knife cautiously. She hardly ever cooked. Samara had no interest in it, employing a chef for most of Nadia’s childhood years, and later a gourmet meal-delivery service. Nadia mostly survived on coffee and toast, with dinners out.
Rashel set a large copper pot with a blackened bottom atop the old gas range. The kitchen hadn’t been updated in decades. The appliances were all massive in scale, with an indestructible, industrial look to them.
Similarly, all the accessories of pots and pans, measuring cups and knives, looked as if they’d been used a thousand times over. They’d been purchased in a time when household goods had been meant to last a lifetime, and some of these items had probably persevered through several generations. The formal tea set, for instance, which Nadia could see in the glass cabinets on the far wall—that surely had been made her in grandparents’ time, if not her great-grandparents.
“Who taught you to cook borscht?” Nadia asked her aunt.
“It was Papa’s mother,” Rashel said, “Nina Lebedev. There are a thousand ways of making borscht. Each family has their own recipe. The taste you know as a child, you’ll never find again in another pot.”
She took a large hunk of chuck roast, still on the bone, and deftly sliced it into bite-sized pieces, using a separate cutting board than the one for the vegetables. She poured oil into the pot, and once it began to shimmer, she generously salted and peppered the meat, then threw it in the oil to brown.
“Some families like sausage in their borscht,” she said. “Some even use hamburger meat.” She gave a sneer of her lip that showed what she thought of that.
Once the meat was good and brown, she added homemade broth from a mason jar in the fridge, and tomato purée from a can.
Only at this point did she notice what a mess Nadia had made of the vegetables—potatoes cut in uneven chunks, cabbage only a quarter shredded.
Sighing, she took Nadia’s place at the cutting board, and in moments, her fingers flying so quickly that Nadia could barely watch them, she had uniformly diced the vegetables, and shredded the cabbage into lovely fine strips.
She threw the veggies in the pot, along with dill, garlic, and a pinch of red pepper flakes.
“You could add lemon instead,” she said. “But in this house, we make our borscht spicy, not sour.”
Nadia watched it all, enthralled at how confidently and deftly her aunt moved around the kitchen. Perhaps it was the warmth and stream of the soup, but color came into Rashel’s face once more, and her eyes looked brighter.
“Grandma Nina was an excellent cook,” Rashel said. “She taught me to make everything—solyanka, pirozhki, stroganoff. At Christmas she would fill the table with so much food that it would sag in the middle. Mama cooked too, and I helped. Only Samara didn’t want to learn.”
She’d been smiling for a moment, enough that Nadia saw the slightest hint of a dimple on the right corner of her mouth, but the smile disappeared when she said her sister’s name.
“It was a happy house then,” Rashel said. “At Christmas time we had thirty people around the table in the formal dining room. Papa played the violin. Even the children were allowed a little wine.”
She looked around as if she could still see it—brightness, warmth, music, laughter.
