Page 56 of The Fire Beneath the Frost

Papa stood and straightened his jacket.“Good.She’s already packed.Leave after breakfast.”

As he left the kitchen, I looked at the keys again, this time with excitement threading through my ribs.

No factory.No family.No eyes.

If I played this right, maybe I could be alone with Petyr.

* * *

The blue Lada Samara rattled down a dirt road that looked more like a walking path than anything built for vehicles.Bushes scraped the sides, and we bounced in our seats like eggs in a carton.On either side, tiny wooden houses stood in rows like cheerful toys, painted in bright shades of blue and white.Hand-carved shutters framed crooked windows, and here and there, tulips were poking up from the dirt like shy children.Even the sun, usually stubbornly hidden behind Leningrad’s ceiling of clouds, made an appearance—squinting through silver haze and dappling the road with reluctant warmth.

We’d been mostly silent on the drive.Mama wasn’t much of a talker unless she had a pot to stir or a neighbor to gossip about.I didn’t mind.I had the wheel in my hands, the wind through the cracked window, and my own thoughts for company.

But then it hit me, like a pothole I hadn’t seen: Mama was going to be gone all summer.Out here.Away from Papa.And it was exactly what she wanted.

“You’re not going to miss Papa, are you?”I blurted, without meaning to.

She shifted in her seat.“Of course I will,” she said after a beat, clearing her throat as if she were swallowing down something bitter.“But a little time apart is always a welcome thing.”

I glanced at her.She was looking out the window with the smallest of smiles.Not cruel, just… resigned.

“What are you going to do all summer?”

At that, her whole demeanor shifted.Excitement warmed her voice like kindling under flame.“Oh, Dimi, I’ve already started my potatoes from seed.This year I’ll try an herb garden, too—dill, chives, maybe thyme if the soil behaves.If I dry them properly, they’ll last all winter.Just imagine the stews I’ll make.”

I tried to imagine it.Mama in a floral apron, humming as she stirred a pot in a dacha that probably didn’t even have a proper kitchen.

She pointed up ahead.“That’s ours.Turn there.”

I did as she said, easing the Lada over a shallow ditch and into the yard of what looked more like a tool shed than a summer home.The house hadn’t been painted like the others; the weathered wood was a weary gray, with trim that might have once been white.It had the shape of something built with hope and then promptly forgotten.A beaten-down shack with a sagging roof and a set of steps that creaked when we walked on them.

It was perfect, in a tragic sort of way.

We opened the trunk, and I helped carry in her things—two burlap sacks of gardening supplies, a battered suitcase, a plastic bag filled with food wrapped in cloth.The cramped interior of the dacha faintly smelled of dust and something old and dry, as if it had held its breath all winter.No electricity.No bathroom.Just a stove that ran on wood, two narrow beds, and a window that looked out on a garden with more weeds than rows.

Out the back, I spotted an outhouse.And a shed smaller than most closets.

Still, as I stood there sweating slightly from hauling things inside, I couldn’t help but think… this beat the hell out of the city.It was quiet.The air smelled like soil instead of machine oil.I could understand why she liked it here.

We cleaned for a while.Me sweeping, her wiping windows with vinegar and newspaper.She lit the stove to boil water, and as she unpacked the last bag, she grinned and pulled out something wrapped in oilcloth.

“Dimi, look at these pictures of you as a child.”

She handed me an old photo album.The corners were bent, and the cover had nearly disintegrated.I sat on the bed, flipping through pages filled with foggy black-and-white snapshots, their corners yellowed with age.

There I was—only a few years old, maybe three or four.Grinning, barefoot, sitting on my father’s shoulders.There was one of us on a picnic blanket, and another of him helping me fly a kite.The man in the pictures looked nothing like the one I knew now.He was smiling, soft around the edges, his arm curled protectively around my tiny body like I was made of glass.

Who was this man?

“What happened to him?”I muttered, not realizing I’d spoken aloud.

Mama looked up from where she was folding linens.“Life got harder,” she said simply.“But for a while, it was easier.We didn’t have a car.We didn’t have a dacha.But we had time.”

She sat beside me and touched a photo.“We thought we were already lucky then.Now, we’ve arrived.”

Arrived where?I wanted to ask.At a two-room shack with no plumbing?But I said nothing.Because she wasn’t wrong.In Soviet terms, this was success.

I opened my mouth to ask something else, but the words vanished before they formed.Instead, I looked out the window toward the road.There it was—just a few houses down.A crooked little vegetable stand, and beside it, a public pay phone with a green-painted booth.

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