Page 9 of 10 Days to Surrender

“So it’s a no, then? You wouldn’t go to her, if you knew?”

I turn and stare him dead in the eyes. “No.”

“Liar.”

My teeth grind together. It doesn’t take much to piss me off these days, and the old man has become an expert in mashing those buttons repeatedly. “I’m not lying.”

“Yes, you are. You’d go find her and drag her into this self-loathing grave with you, if you could.”

I don’t answer. Instead, I look down at the chessboard that rests on a small folding table between the two rocking chairs. It’s in the middle of a game, one that Kosti and I have played on and off for six months running. Weeks pass between moves sometimes. His white is hemming in my black pieces. Pawns have fallen on both sides. My queen is stranded in a distant corner of the board, but my king stands tall alongside a rook.

It looks bad for me, but I know better. I have a move waiting that will flip the game on its head. As soon as it’s my turn again, this will all come to a swift and bloody conclusion.

“She is no longer a part of my life,” I say tonelessly. “It’s best that way for both of us.”

I notice Kosti purse his lips, but he’s quiet for a while. Eventually, he offers up, “You’ll have to choose at some point. Two roads diverge in a yellow wood and all that.”

“We’re doing poetry now?”

“No, Sasha, we’re doing truth.” He cranes his neck to catch my eyes. “Dragan lies at the end of one path; Ariel at the end of another. You can’t walk both at once. You can’t turn back once you’ve chosen. But at some point—maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, butat some point—you’ll have to choose. For your sake and for hers alike, I hope you choose right.”

Then he reaches down and makes a move with his knight that I never saw coming. My plan goes up in smoke.

And so the king remains poised between squares. Stuck. Cornered. Waiting.

Across the board, the queen waits, too.

4

ARIEL

The gel is warmer than I expect. It’s a relief, really—the waiting room’s air conditioning had turned my skin to gooseflesh.

“Ah, there’sBébé A,” the technician murmurs in a thick French accent, pointing to the leftmost blob on the screen. “Kicking up a storm today,non?Très bien. Parfaits.”

I squint. To me, it just looks like static with a pulse.

Spat. Spat. Spat.

The Doppler picks up twin heartbeats. One is steady as she goes, the other staccato as rain on a tin roof. My own heart stumbles over itself trying to match their rhythm.

This is real. This is real. This is real.

I glance down at the swell beneath where my sweater is hiked up to my ribs. I’m as surprised as always by what I see there. Twenty-five weeks in, and I’ve gone from looking moderately peckish to smuggling cantaloupes. Still, my brain hasn’t quite caught up to the math:twocantaloupes.

Twins came as a surprise the first time a technician spotted them. I made him go get the doctor and check again, and when that doctor said the same thing, I made her go getanotherdoctor for triple confirmation. But when the dust settled, they all agreed.

Twins.Twobabies.TwoMakris-Ozerov-Ward angels-to-be.

God help us all.

Right on cue, I feel a pang and I bolt upright, sending a glob of ultrasound gel flying. The twins have been staging an MMA fight in my uterus for weeks now. I’m just the unwilling arena.

“Soon,Maman,” the tech tells me with a broad, toothy grin. “Are you ready?”

I laugh politely and tell her the same thing I tell everyone who asks: “Not even close.”

The woman grins, then leaves to fetch the doctor. I hear a knock on the door a second later, and when I look up, I see Jasmine slipping into the exam room.

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