Page 78 of Porcelain Vows

“My little watcher,” she says, smiling. “Always so serious.”

She crosses to me, touches my cheek with fingers that smell of onions and butter. “One day you’ll be too tall for me to reach your face,” she teases. “Promise you’ll still let me cook for you then?”

I nod solemnly, unable to imagine a world where I wouldn’t want her cooking, her touch, her presence.

The wooden spoon in her hand drips borscht onto the worn linoleum as she laughs at my expression. She ruffles my hair— something Father would have slapped her face for doing— and returns to the stove. The kitchen is small, barely fitting the ancient refrigerator and stained countertop, but when she moves through it, it feels like a palace. Like a sanctuary.

“Aleksei,” she says over her shoulder, “taste this and tell me if it needs more salt.”

I slide from my chair, proud to be her trusted taster. In these quiet moments between us, I feel important. Valued. The complete opposite of how Father makes me feel when hestumbles home stinking of vodka. With my mother, I am safe. Complete. Enough.

The memory dissolves, replaced by the stark reality of the industrial kitchen. Twenty years have passed. I’ve become the man she imagined— too tall for her to reach my face without stretching. But not through natural growth; through her loss. Through the void her disappearance created.

She turns slightly, her profile visible now. The shape of her nose, the curve of her jaw— features I see in my own reflection, in Diana’s face, in Bobik’s expressions. Features I’ve passed to Polina without realizing their origin.

All my power, all my wealth, all my brutality— none of it prepared me for seeing a ghost made flesh.

Would she recognize me? The boy she left behind is gone, replaced by a man hardened by her absence. My face has sharpened, shoulders broadened, eyes darkened with experiences she can’t imagine. I’ve killed men. Ordered deaths. Built an empire on violence and fear.

What would she see if she looked at me now?

She moves away from the pot, returning to her workstation. A younger patient approaches with a question. She answers with a benevolent smile, demonstrating something with her hands. She was always a natural teacher— explaining the world with gentle clarity, making complex things simple for Diana and me.

Another memory rises.

Mother’s cool hand on my forehead, checking for fever, her face wreathed with concern. I am nine, my wrist freshly broken by Father’s rage. She’s splinted it herself, afraid to takeme to a hospital where questions might be asked. Her eyes shine with unshed tears, but her voice remains steady as she tells me stories to distract from the pain.

“You are stronger than he is,” she whispers when she thinks I’m drifting to sleep. “Not in your fists, Lyosha. In your heart. Remember that.”

I blink the memory away, my throat tight with an emotion I haven’t allowed myself to feel in decades.

Grief.

Not for a dead mother, but for all the years stolen from us. All the moments she missed. All the times I needed her guidance and found only emptiness.

She moves to the sink, washing her hands thoroughly before wiping them on her apron. Something about the gesture is so achingly familiar that a sound escapes me— not quite a word, not quite a breath.

She pauses, head tilting slightly as if sensing that she’s being watched. Her eyes lift, scanning the dining area visible through the glass partition. For a moment, her gaze passes over me without recognition. Hurt flares for a moment before I put it into perspective. How could she possibly recognize me now? The years have turned me into something else. Something hard and unyielding. Nothing like the boy she left behind.

Then something shifts in her expression— not recognition exactly, but awareness. The instinctive sense that someone is watching with more than casual interest. It’s a look I’ve seen countless times before— in targets who sense they’re being hunted, in business associates who realize too late they’ve crossed me. That basic instinct humans never quite lose, no matter how civilized we pretend to be.

Her shoulders tense slightly, her movements becoming more deliberate as she scans the room again, slower this time, searching for the source of that prickling sensation at the back of her neck.

She says something to another kitchen worker, then moves toward a door at the side of the kitchen. My muscles tense, fight-or-flight instinct warring with the desperate need to remain exactly where I am. To see her. To hear her voice.

The door opens. She emerges into the dining area, wiping her hands on her apron. She approaches slowly, eyes narrowing slightly as she studies me. There is no recognition in her gaze— only the cautious concern of someone approaching a stranger who seems out of place.

“Vy v poryadke, molodoy chelovek?” she asks.Are you okay, young man?

Her voice. After twenty years, her voice. Slightly rougher than I remember, but with the same gentle cadence that once soothed nightmares and healed wounds. The sound unlocks something in my chest— a pressure valve releasing emotions I’ve contained for two decades.

I’ve ordered men killed without blinking, but I can’t form a single word as my mother— my dead mother— walks toward me. My throat closes. My vision blurs. My hands, capable of such violence, hang uselessly at my sides.

She stops two feet away, concern deepening in her expression. “Gospodi, you’re pale as death. Should I call someone?”

One word. I need to say one word to shatter the distance between us. To bridge years of absence. To transform her concern for a stranger into… into what? Joy? Horror? Disbelief?

What would she think of this man standing before her? Would she be proud? Disappointed? Horrified? There’s only one way to find out.

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