“Your folks and brothers wouldn’t be so worried if there wasn’t one.”
“Their concern is that it was such a new procedure. All the indicators say I should live a long and happy life, but the surgery doesn’t have enough of a track record yet to know for sure. Like I said, hope is a tricky thing and not always easy to believe in. I decided to embrace the possibilities. I’m just sorry that it’s hard for my family to do that, too.”
Misha shifted to look straight at her. “Are you sure that you’ve embraced the idea of hope or is it that you’re determined to cram as much as possible into whatever time you have? Because I’m telling you right now, those aren’t the same things at all.”
She flinched, his words striking a little too close to home. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
His smile flashed in the darkness. “I have one word to say on that subject—motorcycle.”
He had her there. “Okay, maybe you’re a little bit right, but you have to admit I have a lot of catching up to do. Maybe it would have been smarter to take things a lot slower, but I don’t want to die having never lived at all. And that’s true whether I have five years left or fifty, because none of us come marked with an exact expiration date.”
Mikhail flinched and turned away from her again. The pale moonlight emphasized all the sharp edges in his handsome face, making him look hard and unyielding. It was clear that he was hurting, but she couldn’t guess the source of his pain.
“Misha? Talk to me.”
He stared up at the sky in silence. Finally, he said, “I’ve never told you much about my own background.”
“I know you, Jack, and Tino were in the foster system until you were all adopted by Marlene and her husband.”
Sarge chose that moment to start snoring, the deep rumble briefly softening the grim look on Mikhail’s face. “I wish you could have met Joe Lukash. He was the best person I’ve ever known. Looking back, it was Marlene who showed us what it meant to be a family. We all love her like crazy for that, but it was Joe who taught us what it meant to be good men. With tough love and a gentle hand, he gave each of us a sense of self-worth, something we didn’t have when we arrived on his doorstep. We would’ve done anything to make him proud of us.”
“And you all succeeded. You have to know he was proud of you, and rightly so.”
She wasn’t sure Mikhail had even heard what she’d said, because he continued speaking in that same emotionless tone. “His death ripped a huge hole in my life, like somehow the anchor in my world had been ripped away. Now I’m back to drifting again and not sure where I’m headed.”
He quit talking, but his last words hung there in the air between them. Joe’s death had taken a toll on Mikhail, but it was clear that something else had happened in his past that was equally bad, maybe even a whole lot worse. Actually, judging from the shudder that passed through his big body, there was no maybe about it.
She hated to poke and prod at a raw wound that clearly still hurt him so much, but her instincts said he’d held the pain in for too long already. She picked up Panda and scooted across the grass to sit behind Mikhail. After settling the dog back beside her, she tugged on Mikhail’s shoulders, hoping he’d lay back with his head in her lap. To her surprise, he didn’t fight her on it and settled against her with a soft sigh.
She ran her fingers through his hair, keeping her touch light. “You said you were driftingagain,Misha, like you’ve done this before. Tell me what happened.”
He immediately reached up to capture her hand in his. “I don’t think my birth mother ever knew for sure who my father was, so it was always just the two of us. She had an Eastern European accent, but she never told me anything about her background, where she came from, or how she came to be living here in the States. I’m guessing she was here illegally. Even when she was able to hold down a regular job, usually as a maid in some run-down motel, she always worked on a cash-only basis.” He swallowed hard and added, “Her male visitors always paid her in cash, too.”
Mikhail lifted his eyes long enough to look straight up at Amy, maybe to judge her reaction to that little bombshell. When she gave his hand a reassuring squeeze, he started talking again. “Mom tried hard to stay away from drugs. She sometimes went for months at a stretch without using. Those were always the best times. But even if there was enough money for food and rent, I was continually outgrowing my clothes and shoes. I hated how hard she had to work, how many men she had to invite in to keep me in shoes.”
Amy hurt for the boy and the woman who had struggled to take care of each other. “She loved you, and you loved her.”
“Yeah, we did. After all, it was just the two of us against the world. I would’ve done anything to take care of her, especially when she was struggling. I skipped so much school to stay home with her that the authorities threatened to take me away from her. If they’d done that, I was scared I wouldn’t ever see her again. As far as I ever knew, she had no real friends or any family who could have helped us. When she had me to focus on, she did better and could make it through the day. You know, without the drugs.”
He paused again and then whispered, “Maybe life wouldn’t have broken her if she hadn’t been saddled with a kid when she was still one herself.”
Amy jerked her hand out of his and smacked him on top of the head. “Don’t ever talk that way. Never doubt you were the best thing that ever happened to her.”
Mikhail sat up, his broad back rigid and tense. “If that’s true, then why did she shove a needle full of heroin in her arm while I was at school?”
Oh God, she’d suspected his mother had died, but not like that. “You couldn’t have known that would happen, Misha.”
Mikhail turned to look at her. “But I did know, Amy, or at least I should have. She was going through a real rough spell, but together we’d gotten through them before. I knew better than to leave her alone when she got that bad, but the school officials were on my ass about skipping too many days again. By the time I got home, it was already too late. She’d been dead for hours.” He shuddered. “Her body was so cold.” Mikhail’s voice was little better than a growl, his words laced with pain and grief. “If I’d stayed home just one more time, I could have talked her out of using.”
Sympathy wasn’t working, so this time she went for anger. “That’s crap, Mikhail Wanjek, and you know it. I don’t mean to speak badly of your mother, but she was the adult in this equation, not you.”
When he started to protest, she cut him off and again took his hand. “Yes, maybe you could have talked her off the ledge that day, but what about the next day and the day after that? If you’d stayed home once too often, you know CPS would’ve stepped in, and she would have been even more alone.”
He lapsed back into silence. She gave him a few seconds to process that much before continuing. “I want to say one more thing, and then I’ll shut up. Your mother wouldn’t have wanted you to feel guilty about what happened to her. She deserves your love, not your guilt, and the gratitude of the people in your life who love you for the amazing man you’ve become. Like your brothers, like Marlene and Joe, and…me.”
When he didn’t react, she wondered if anything she’d said had actually registered. She’d barely whispered that last word, so maybe he hadn’t heard it. All things considered, perhaps that was for the best.
Then he spoke again. “Maybe you’re right, and I couldn’t have saved my mother no matter what I tried to do. For sure that seems to be the pattern of my life. God knows I’ve failed to save so many others over the years. Friends I served with who didn’t make it back home. Innocent civilians we were fighting to protect in whatever hell zone we were sent to.”
