Lost - Michael Robotham [147]
The rain has turned to sleet.
“You want to tell me what happened?”
He glances at his boots. “Things have gone too far. He should never have come. He took her away from one home and now he wanted to take her away again. He has caused enough trouble.”
A woman appears in the doorway behind him. A young girl is pressed against her.
“This is my wife, Elena,” says Sacha.
Her arm is wrapped around the girl’s shoulders, shielding her from the sight of Aleksei’s body.
“We have taken good care of her. She has never wanted for anything.” Sacha searches for the words. “She has been like a daughter …”
Rachel’s hand flutters to her mouth as if trying to stop her breath escaping. She moves forward, past my shoulder, crossing the distance between them.
Mickey is wearing jodhpurs and a riding jacket. Her hair is plaited and rests across her shoulder. Elena has an identical plait.
Edging closer, Rachel drops to her knees. The toes of her boots barely move the frozen gravel.
Mickey says something to Elena in Russian.
“English now,” says Sacha. “You’re going home.”
“But this is home.”
He smiles at her gently. “Not anymore. You are an English girl.”
“No!” She shakes her head angrily, beginning to cry.
“Listen to me.” Sacha rests the rifle against the wall of the house and crouches beside her. “Don’t cry. I have taught you to be strong. Remember when we went ice fishing last winter? How cold it was? You never once complained. Nyet.”
She throws her arms around him, sobbing into his neck.
Rachel has watched with a mixture of trepidation and expectation. She takes a deep breath. “I’ve missed you, Mickey.”
Mickey lifts her face and smears a tear across her cheek with the palm of her hand.
“I’ve been waiting for you a long time. I stayed in the one place—hoping I might find you. I still have your room and all your toys.”
“I can ride a horse now,” announces Mickey.
“Really!”
“And I can ice-skate. I’m not scared of going outside anymore.”
“I can see that. You’ve grown so tall. I bet you can reach the top cupboard in the kitchen, near the window.”
“Where you keep the treats.”
“You remember.” Rachel’s eyes are shining. She holds out her fingers. Mickey looks at her tentatively and stretches out her own hand. Rachel draws her close and breathes in the smell of her hair.
“I’m OK now,” says Mickey. “You don’t have to cry.”
“I know.”
Rachel looks up at me and then at Sacha, who thumps his chest trying to clear his throat. The young Russian policemen have gathered around Aleksei’s body, running fingers over the collar of his handmade shirt and feeling the softness of his cashmere overcoat. Dmitri has unclipped the wristwatch and compares it to his own.
Meanwhile, the snow whispers down, swirling in eddies and whirlpools, turning shades of gray into black and white.
Another country. Another mother and child.
Daj is in a wheelchair with me alongside, enduring one of those long silences that other people find awkward. She is wrapped in a white shawl that she holds together with her curling hands as she stares motionless out the window like an ancient malevolent bird of prey.
Behind us a flower-arranging class is setting up on the tables. Blue rinses and gray heads hum, coo and twitter to each other, as they sort through greenery and blooms of different colors.
I show Daj the front page of a newspaper. The photograph is of Mickey and Rachel, embracing for the cameras in the arrival hall at Heathrow Airport. You can just see me in the background, pushing the luggage cart. Perched on the top suitcase is a hand-painted babushka doll.
Joe is in the photograph, too. Standing next to him is Ali out of her wheelchair, leaning on his shoulder for support. She’s holding a poster saying, “Welcome home, Mickey!”
“Remember that missing girl, Daj—the one I tried to find all those years ago? Well, I found her. I brought her home.”
For a brief moment Daj looks at me proudly, curling her long fingers through mine. Then I realize that she doesn’t understand.