Page 49 of Vasily the Hammer

“Uh huh. About how he saved you and protected you. And he took you to happy church and he loved you and-and-and how he couldn’t be with us because he had to do scary stuff but that he loved me so much and his favorite food was pierogi, too!”

Oh no.

I purse my lips into a tight ring to keep from hyperventilating. I wrap my arms around Artom, who flops right onto me, giving me his entire weight.

How many times did I do that to Vasily? How often was I in his embrace, listening to him breathe so evenly, likeeverything was fine even though I was breaking apart, and he was so much stronger than me for being solid?

He was good to me. It was only a couple weeks, and he kept so much from me— because most of what he did share was a lie— but he was also gentle with me. He was easy when he let his guard down.

So many times, he insisted that I needed to remember he loved me.

I can’t fall for it. I haven’t had any concrete memories come back, but other things are. Names, faces, feelings, places, weird facts about myself like how I’ve won regional biblical quote bees, which how the heck is that a thing, but I’m healing. I don’t know that everything will come back, and I do need to see a doctor soon about continuing care after everything, more MRIs or whatever, but I’m going to be myself again. And I should wait until then to decide what to do about Vasily.

“Hey, Artom?”

“Yes, Mommy?”

“Did we ever cook together?”

“I love cooking!” he squeals way too loudly for how close he is to my ear, but I don’t need to hear. I just need to be a good mom.

“Do you want to come with me to see if we’ve got ingredients for pierogi in the kitchen?”

“We just need ‘tatoes and flour!”

And he’s right about that. But we’re going to make way betterpierogi.

“I wasn’t expecting you to still be awake,” Tony says to me when he comes home well past midnight. I know what he is. Vasily kept crazy hours, too. He had that office, and it was obvious he did work in it and some of that work was daytime, but when he woke me up last night, it was nearly this late.

I get these nauseous feelings when I think about last night, and I can’t decide if it’s because of how my rapist tormented me again or if it’s because that baby he swore he was trying to give me didn’t happen and never will.

Did he know that already? Is that something they would have noticed during my medical exam and mentioned to Vasily?

“Couldn’t sleep,” I tell him. “Been exhausted all day, but then I fell asleep in Artom’s bed for a couple hours, and when I tried to move to my room...” I shrug helplessly to this parlor I ended up in, with its comfy chairs suitable for reading and with a textbook I selected from my shelf because it had so many sticky tabs on the pages that I had to have spent a lot of time with it.

I know everything in it. I just don’t remember anyone teaching it to me.

“And no wonder,” he says sympathetically as he tosses his jacket over a divan. Glitter puffs out of it like he was just at a strip club. He owns one. Or Vasily does. Huh. A weird fact to pop up, but no weirder than any of the others that randomly pop.

“I don’t think I thanked you,” I tell him.

“For what?”

“For taking care of Artom. And for going all the way to Florida to pick him up. That was a big ask.”

He waves me off. “Never. You’re my sister. You and Artom are all that’s left of the family. Of course I was going to pick him up and take care of him.”

“Did you know what happened? To me?”

He shakes his head and sits at the end of the divan. “No, not really. We found security footage of your restaurant. We saw you getting taken. But you were closing that night. No one saw it or even knew it had happened the next day. Your car was in the parking lot, but it’s a restaurant; not super weird for people to leave their cars. And Tia, the lady Artom stays the night with when you’re working, called me first, so the cops weren’t even notified until after that.”

“Is there an investigation happening? Do I need to call them? The people who rescued me, I don’t think I should tell the cops about them, but I don’t know what else to say. Can I just say I got amnesia so I don’t—”

“Lacey, Lacey, Lacey,” Tony rushes out with a laugh I feel like isn’t normal for him. He’s older than me. I’d say about Vasily’s age of 32 if not even older. He’s fit, a different build from Vasily’s bulky frame, more of a smooth, slender physique, but he doesn’t have any laugh lines. Even Vasily, who didn’t laugh much with me either, had them.

I look more closely at Tony, at his slick-smooth black coif, his high cheekbones, his arguably weak chin, the twin gold chains peeking out from his white dress shirt and the array of rings on his hands.

He’s slightly disheveled from the day, but there’s something Barbie-like about him. Plasticky, like a Ken doll. It’s possible his hair is so dark it lacks any highlights and as yet untouched by grays, but I saw the pictures of Dad. He went gray young. I’m only 25, and I’ve plucked a couple on my own head.

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