Page 40 of Sapphire Tears

“That doesn’t sound like a connection born of survival, Kolya,” I say. “That sounds like love.”

“Call it what you like,” he answers gruffly.

“What happened?”

He glances at me, eyes burning white-hot. “The same thing that happens to most people over time. We changed.”

“Who did the changing?” I ask. “Him or you?”

“We both did. I had to become the don I was meant to be. Doing that meant distancing myself from everyone. Including him.”

He keeps stroking the keys, and the longer I watch him do it, the more I realize that there’s hidden emotion in the gesture.

“But you both kept playing the piano?” I ask.

Kolya nods. “It was the one thing Otets never stopped.”

“Because he loved your mother?” I ask, wondering if I should even go there. It can’t be a coincidence that Kolya has rarely ever spoken about his mother.

The only thing I know about her is that she was the one who had encouraged her sons to learn to play.

“Love was not an emotion that my father understood,” he says coldly. “Maybe keeping her pianos was his method of compensation.”

I float around the corner of the instrument and toward where he’s seated on the piano bench. “Compensation for what?”

“For removing her from our lives.”

I suck in my breath, but Kolya doesn’t seem to notice. “What does that mean?” I ask. “‘Removing her from your lives…’?”

“She used to spend most summers in the south of France. One day, Otets told us that she wouldn’t be coming back.”

“That must have been hard on both of you,” I say, feeling the heartbreak of their childhood as if it were only hours old. “Having her leave like that.”

Kolya shakes his head and pins his fingers down on the keys. One note, another, another, until a song starts to take shape. Music flutters up into the air, and for a moment, I close my eyes and feel my body respond to the sweet notes. He touches the piano like it’s his lover. Like he touches me.

Then the music stops abruptly. The notes strangle in the air. I open my eyes and look down at Kolya.

“It was a lie, June,” Kolya tells me. “My mother never left us. She was taken.”

18

KOLYA

I wonder if June even realizes that her hand is on my shoulder.

Her hazel eyes are filled with an awe that’s decaying quickly into dread. To be honest, I have no fucking clue why I’m telling her any of this. It happened so long ago that the memories have fused with my skin and taken up permanent residence there.

I don’t need to relive it.

I certainly don’t need to repeat it.

And yet here I am, sharing this part of my past with a woman who doesn’t even know what she’s taking from me.

“What do you mean, ‘s-she was taken’?” June asks, her voice dropping low as if she’s afraid we’ll be overheard.

“My father decided he’d had enough of her. He took her and sold her.”

“H-he sold her?” June gasps. “His own wife?”

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