She’d snatched a black dress off the hanger almost at random, only realizing after she’d already put it on that it was a 1940s style wool midi-dress, much more suited to a chill fall day than the beginning of a blazing summer.
She unzipped the dress now and flung it down on the floor of her closet, something else that was almost unheard of. Nadia was usually scrupulously tidy, almost pathologically so. Yet another thing she and Maxim quarreled about—when he was lazy and strew things around her apartment for the maids to pick up later.
It would be good for them to go away on holiday together. They got along best on vacation. Maxim was a good traveler—good at snorkeling, swimming, paddle boarding, hiking, good at dancing, at meeting fellow travelers and finding parties to attend. He would distract Nadia. Help dispel this lump of iron in her stomach that was relentlessly weighing her down.
Still, as she slipped naked beneath the sheets, she was glad that Maxim was not there now. He would want sex, as he always did when he stayed over. He wouldn’t care that she’d buried her mother a few hours earlier. Maxim was used to getting everything he wanted, without question.
* * *
Just after noonthe following day, Nadia retrieved her little orange Ferrari Spider from the underground garage. It was another glorious sunny day, and this time Nadia was willing to enjoy it, instead of cursing the cheerfulness of the weather. She had wrapped a silk scarf around her hair so she could put the convertible top down, and she roared out onto the street, disturbing a flock of pigeons who’d been pecking for crumbs outside the boulangerie.
Great-aunt Galina lived almost an hour outside of Paris, over by Versailles. However, it wasn’t the famed palace that had attracted her aunt, but rather a large arboretum with hundreds of species of plants and trees. Galina was a dedicated gardener. Her tiny little house was dwarfed by the numerous greenhouses, flowerbeds, and orchards that surrounded it.
Nadia hadn’t visited in many years, but she vividly remembered the fresh peaches and cream Galina had served her, as well as the raspberries Nadia had picked warm off the vines. It was almost worth chancing the invariably stale biscuits.
Nadia did not expect Galina to actually have anything of value that had belonged to her mother. Samara wouldn’t have left anything important at Galina’s house. Samara owned her own luxurious townhouse in Trocadero, which she had all to herself since Nadia’s father had died six years earlier.
Still, Nadia had promised to drive out. And it’s not like she had anything more important to do with her time.
She arrived at the little house soon enough, parking in the unpaved drive and heading straight back to the gardens, correctly surmising that Galina would not be inside.
She found her aunt kneeling amongst the tomato plants, tying the growing plants to their stakes with soft twine.
Nadia was surprised how dexterously her aunt’s fingers could work, considering how twisted and gnarled they were.
“Have you ever grown tomatoes?” Galina asked her, by way of greeting.
“No,” Nadia said. “I can’t even keep a cactus alive.”
Galina made a horrified face.
“I don’t know how you plan to raise a baby, if you can’t care for a plant,” she said.
“I don’t plan to raise a baby,” Nadia said. “At least, not any time soon.”
She had never seriously considered having children with Maxim. He’d be bored by a baby. And he’d hate her getting fat.
“Your mother used to say that, too,” Galina said.
“Did she?” Nadia said.
It didn’t surprise her. Samara had never been very maternal. Nadia had been raised by nannies more than either of her parents. Her father had always been heavily involved in the Turgenev business interests, and her mother had attended law school almost as soon as Nadia was born. Once she’d received her degree, she launched herself into her criminal defense practice, finding no end of clients in the ranks of her own family and their employees.
Nadia’s father had disliked his wife’s focus on career, but he could hardly protest when he was barely home himself. Their relationship had grown chillier by the year. Nadia had always suspected that they would divorce, or at least live separately, once she moved out of the house. But her father had died of a stroke instead, the year she graduated high school.
“When did Mama live here?” Nadia asked.
“The year she moved to Paris,” Galina said promptly. “She was already engaged to your father, but people didn’t live together before marriage at that time. At least, not Turgenevs, or Lebedevs, which was what your mother was then. So she stayed with me—I had a flat in the city. She lived with me two months, and then she was married in the Basilica Cathedral. There had never been a more beautiful bride. Everybody said it.”
“I’ve never seen my parents’ wedding picture,” Nadia said.
Galina looked astonished again, though not quite as amazed as she had been by Nadia’s black thumb.
“Well,” she said, dusting the soil off her hands, “I have an album.”
Nadia followed her into the house, pulling the silk scarf off her head to let her hair fall, thick and dark, around her shoulders.
The house was tiny and dim inside, but quite cool because of the shade of the cedar, oak, and walnut trees thickly clustered round, their boughs overhanging the roof and their leaves blocking the light so effectively that not a blade of grass could grow in their shadow.
