Page 24 of Shattered Altar (Makarova Bratva Duet)

“What the hell is going on?” I ask myself. I can’t shake the feeling that something terrible has happened.

I wait another ten minutes, and when my phone still remains stubbornly mute, I decide I’m done waiting. I veer out from under the awning and towards the taxi queue.

Of course, just my luck, that’s when the universe decides to start raining. Grudgingly, I pull my woolen sweater back on and stand in line behind a gaggle of surly businessmen.

When it’s my turn, the driver who steps up is a portly older gentleman with a thick mustache and the wispiest beard I’ve ever seen. I might have found it amusing if I wasn’t so preoccupied with where my family is.

Was there a fire or a gas leak? Did a truck run them off the road? Did all three of them suffer a case of simultaneous amnesia and forget that they have a sister and daughter who’s supposed to be spending the holidays with them?

“Home for the holidays?” the driver asks.

I jerk upright and stifle a scream the moment he speaks.

He throws me a concerned glance through his mirror. “Sorry, miss. Didn’t mean to startle ya.”

“No, it’s okay. I was just… Yes, home for the holidays.”

“Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t look so happy.”

I was when I left home this morning. I still was when I arrived at the airport an hour later.

But a lot has changed between then and now. The world has shifted beneath my feet.

“Well… it’s our first Christmas without my dad,” I say before I can think. “Or, wait, actually, that’s not true. I don’t know why I said that. This is year seven.”

“Oh, dear,” the cab driver says with a sympathetic nod. “I’ve been there. Not with my pops—he was a mean old drunk and the world is better off without him. But my wife. She passed on a while back. The first everything without them is hard. But then again, so’s the rest of things. Pain feels fresh every year, if I’m being honest.”

I focus on his voice, which has a deep, soothing timbre. It feels good to sit here in the back of a cab and have a conversation with a kind stranger. A little stretch of normalcy amidst too many unexpected turns.

“Does it get easier?” I ask.

“Hm. I don’t know about easier,” he says after some thought. “You just get used to it, you know? You get used to missing them. Familiar kind of ache.”

He gives me a kindly smile through the rearview mirror and goes back to looking at the road. On any other day, I would be committing every detail of his face to memory so that I could draw it later. The bulbous nose, the paper-thin skin around his eyes that crinkles when he smiles.

But my head is too full of unanswered questions to appreciate what I usually appreciate—the simple humanity of another living, breathing person in this universe.

I’m too worried about my own people. About Mia, about Rob, about Mom.

Worried about Aleks as well, of course, albeit in a completely different way. And I will not be entertaining thoughts on that subject, thank you very much.

“Who are you spending the holidays with?” I ask—anything to distract from the too-fresh memories that keep threatening to suck me into them like a black hole.

“I’ve got a son about your age,” he says. “We’re going to do what we do every year: watch old football games, eat store-bought turkey and fruitcake, and drink lots of beer.”

I smile. “That sounds sorta perfect.”

“I sure think so,” he chuckles. “Damien—that’s my boy—he’s a good kid. He was devastated when Mary died, but he didn’t really allow himself time to grieve. It’s all that male bravado we force onto our boys. It ain’t healthy.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” I say.

I’m thinking of my own brother. He processed Dad’s death differently than the rest of us. Became quieter, more withdrawn. It was another reason we were grateful to Isabella: she entered his life and gave him something to smile about.

But when she disappeared, everything got worse than ever before.

Even though I wasn’t around this past year, Mia filled me in on the lows. It was easy to pick up on the changes anytime when we talked on the phone.

“I’m Liv, by the way,” I say.

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