Page 8

I don’t push. Not yet. I lead him into the kitchen instead.

The table is covered in food, because I don’t know how to cook for fewer than eight people. Scrambled eggs with dill. Fried kolbasa. Black bread from yesterday, sliced and toasted. Leftover syrniki, warmed through. Sour cream, the last of the cherry jam, and a fresh pot of tea under Mama’s knitted cozy.

Milana is at the table in her pajamas, eating eggs straight out of the pan with a wooden spoon. She looks up as we come in and grins at Caleb with her mouth full.

“You,” she says.

“Milana.”

“He walks. He talks. He came back.” She swallows. “I owe Zhenya twenty bucks.”

“Where is Zhenya?” I ask, because she is usually down by now barking about more stuff she has found out about the men we are to marry. Though she is suspiciously silent about her own.

“Office. On the phone with Margaret again. At this rate she’s going to break the trust with the sheer power of being annoying.” Milana scrapes the last of the eggs into her mouth. “Arina went shooting. Eva’s upstairs trying on every dress she owns for Theo’s family tonight. She’s on the eleventh one. She’s crying but I think it’s frustration.”

“I’ll go up in a minute.”

“She said not to. She said you’d make her eat something and she’s too nervous to eat.” Milana stands, stretches, and puts the empty pan in the sink. She pats Caleb on the arm as she passes him, like he’s a horse. “Eat something. She won’t let you leave until you do. I’m going back to bed.”

Caleb is looking at the table. All of it, every plate and bowl, very slowly. Then he looks at me.

“Who’s this for?”

“Everyone,” I say. “Whoever.”

“Galana. Who’s actually eating?”

I open my mouth. Close it. Arina’s at the range. Eva’s too nervous. Zhenya won’t come out of the office until lunch, and Milana just ate a pan of eggs.

“You are,” I say, hopefully.

The corner of his mouth moves. It isn’t a smile, but it’s similar to what he did in the cafe yesterday which I think was an attempt at a smile.

He takes off his coat, hangs it on the back of a chair, and sits.

He eats like a man who’s used to eating alone. Quickly, neatly, without talking. I put eggs on his plate, and kolbasa, and two slices of bread, and he eats all of it, and when I go to add more, he puts his hand flat over the plate and shakes his head.

“Sit with me,” he says.

I sit and pour us both some tea.

It’s very quiet in the kitchen. Upstairs, I can hear Eva’s wardrobe doors banging. In the office, Zhenya’s voice rises and falls. The radiator ticks. Caleb wraps his big hands around Mama’s teacup, and it looks like a toy.

“Tell me about this house,” he says.

“What about it?”

“Anything. You’ve lived here your whole life.”

“Since I was two.” I think about it. “It was louder when I was little. Mama sang. All the time. Papa used to say she sang like a siren. He’d always appear wherever she was singing and just watch her.”

Caleb doesn’t say anything.

“She died when I was six,” I hear myself say. “Aneurysm. She was making syrniki, and she said she had a headache, and she went to lie down. And that was it.”

I look at the stove. Papa had it replaced twice, but it’s always been in the same place.

“I remember the frying pan,” I say. “Still on the burner. She had turned it off, but the syrniki were all burned black on one side. Arina scraped them into the bin before Papa saw them. She had just turned ten.”