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Valentina Nikolaevna left her job every day at three; she sat in her renovated kitchen, with her dumb husband stuck at his research in the volcanological institute uphill, and made up her mind that Olya had a flawed family structure—because Olya’s mother had a skill, because she had to travel, because they didn’t have the money to hang around painting their lashes and watching the evening news and fretting over two random little girls.
That Valentina Nikolaevna just hated Olya, hated her mother, for no reason, because they were brave enough to survive on their own.
Max returned to a set-up camp. Peeled potatoes bumped in a pot filled with stream water. Katya had laid half a smoked salmon belly, alongside slices of radish, tomato, and white cheese, on a plastic bag on the hood of her car, so they could snack before dinner.
Her mother warned her that cold traveled up a woman’s feet to the rest of her body. That’s how girls go barren, her mother had said.
But she and Chander understood what she meant—she used to fear going out of reach of the microwave timer. Now Ruslan was growing more comfortable, and she, too, was improving.
She would allow him many awkward moments for the sake of that familiarity.
“Fucking lesbian.” He spoke like he was serious. People died for less.
Masha may have carried Lada’s love with her wherever she went, but that didn’t keep anyone safe. Besides the hiking, and the reading, the games played in their courtyard and the movies watched in bed, Lada would hold on to this: her friend bare-shouldered, stubborn. Stupid enough to speak honestly. Sitting near midnight in weather that turned their toes white against the gravel. Smiling. Beautiful Masha, all grown up yet still childish. Unafraid of what harm was sure to come to her.
Everyone looked better at a distance. Everyone sounded sweetest when you did not have to hear them talk too long. After her husband hung up, Natasha skated past her brother at the wall, their mother cleaning her glasses beside him. Loving someone close-up—that was difficult.
“What things, Mama?” Her mother would rather despise the police, suspect their neighbors, picture her youngest child grabbed and murdered than admit Lilia had run away from them.
If someone had told Oksana then that in six months, Anton would be gone but Max and Katya would still be together, and that the two would come over for dinner, Max would leave his notes behind, and Oksana, trusting in her long friendship with Katya, would momentarily believe in this cretin enough to share her keys, she would have poisoned the ice cream she served them all that night for dessert.
