Page 65 of Ivory Ashes

That isn’t sending me into a shame spiral at all. Nope. I’m doing awesome.

“Why did you go into Mikhail’s room?”

“I dunno,” Dante shrugs.

“If you need something, you should come to me.”

“I can go to Mikhail, too,” he argues. “He’s my dad.”

The words drop with the force of an atomic bomb. It’s all I can do to stay standing. I lose my grip on the pillow and Dante takes the opportunity to snatch it away while I’m reeling from those three little words.

He’s my dad.

“Who told you that?” I ask, but Dante can’t hear me. He’s too busy divebombing Anatoly.

Anatoly tickles Dante into submission and suggests a game of hide-and-seek while I manage to collapse down on the couch and stare straight ahead at the wall. As soon as Dante runs into the closest closet, positive neither of us saw him, Anatoly claps a hand on my shoulder.

“You okay?”

I look up at him, eyes narrowing. “Did you tell him?”

“Not a word,” he claims, hands raised in surrender. “Stella didn’t say anything, either. We were up late talking last night and she was still using codewords just in case.”

If it was any other day, I’d ask Anatoly what he was doing staying up late to talk to Stella, but I’m too deep in my own existential panic to focus on that now.

“Would Mikhail tell him?”

“No.” Anatoly shakes his head with finality. “He wouldn’t. I think… Kids have a way of just knowing this stuff. It’s instinctual.”

“I’ve stopped that kid from shoving a fork in a light socket and trying to eat marbles. Children have no instincts.”

“They do about this,” he insists. “I mean, my father never told me he was my dad, but I knew. I also knew he liked me less than my brothers. Kids read between the lines.”

“There haven’t been lines to read between,” I mumble.

But of course there have.

Dante and I moved into Mikhail’s house the day that we met him.

Mikhail sat by his bed with me last night and calmed him after a nightmare.

Mikhail swore to Dante that he would take care of both of us.

In a lot of ways, there hasn’t been much need to read between the lines. The lines themselves have been pretty damn clear.

I drop my face in my hands. “What a mess.”

“It’s only a mess for you, Viv,” Anatoly says unhelpfully, heading for the closet. “The rest of us are doing just fine.”

Anatoly pretends to look for Dante behind a plant and under the sofa before he rips open the closet door and chases Dante around the room, wailing like a ghoul.

My son is fed, safe, and happy because of Mikhail. I should be thrilled. My horoscope this morning did say that I’m finding a new balance in my life and I should embrace it. Maybe Mikhail is that balance.

But is this what balance feels like? Like a boulder sitting on your chest, slowly crushing the life out of you?

Dante ropes Anatoly into one more round of hide-and-seek. “He’s not very good at this game,” Dante whispers to me after he opens his eyes and immediately sees Anatoly trying and failing to cover his massive shoulders with one of the curtain panels.

“I call for a rematch!” Anatoly cries just as Stella sweeps into the room.

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