The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [66]
Missie clutched Azaylee’s hand even tighter. She lifted her chin high and stared straight ahead, afraid to catch anyone’s eye in case she broke down and cried. Without Sofia, she felt alone and helpless.
She heard footsteps and turned, surprised to see O’Hara walking behind her, looking hot and uncomfortable in a stiff collar with his old striped tie knotted around his neck instead of holding up his pants as it usually did. He wore his special St. Patrick’s Day shamrock-green suspenders and a black broadcloth jacket straining at the seams. “I thought I’d best give you me support,” he whispered, clutching his black derby respectfully to his chest.
There was a sudden murmur along the street as another man fell into step beside him. Zev Abramski had broken his Sabbath to attend Sofia Danilova’s funeral. Missie was torn between hysterical laughter and bitter tears as she thought of their ridiculous little procession: an Irish saloonkeeper and a Jewish pawnbroker, an English girl, a small child, and a borzoi dog escorting one of Russia’s greatest princesses to her grave.
St. Savior’s was lighted by a hundred flickering candles as Father Feeny said the beautiful Catholic mass, and as they lowered Sofia’s coffin into the ground she thought wistfully that before there had always been hope, the thought that maybe this was just a charade they had to play for a while the way they used to at Christmas parties and that soon everything would return to normal. But as they threw earth onto Sofia’s coffin, she knew it was real and forever. Before she had been a child. Now she must become a woman.
Azaylee tugged at her hand. “I want to go home,” she wailed in Russian, “to my real home. I want Papa and Princess Maman. I want Alexei.” Missie hugged her tightly, and their tears mingled. “I’m tired of this game, Missie,” she screamed hysterically. “I want to go home, I want it all to be the way it used to be. I want Varishnya. I want my grandmother Sofia Ivanoff back.”
Missie’s eyes met Zev Abramski’s and she knew he had understood what the child had said and that she had lied to him. He knew now that they had buried Sofia Ivanoff, not Sofia Danilova.
His face was expressionless as he bowed to her and said, “My condolences. May your grandmother be your messenger to God in heaven.” Then he turned and walked quickly away.
O’Hara stared after him, mystified, then he checked the pocket watch strung on a gold chain across his front. “I’d best be getting back to the saloon,” he said, thrusting some money hurriedly into her hand. “A funeral always makes a person hungry, and there’s to be no proper wake the way there should be. Buy yourself and the little one a good dinner and you’ll feel better.” His red hair curled wildly in the heat and he tugged uncomfortably at his stiff collar, mopping the sweat from his forehead with a large red-spotted kerchief. “Remember what I said before, Missie. I’ll not be rushing you now, I’m a patient man. I just want you to know I’m ready whenever you are.” And settling the small black derby on his halo of red curls, he marched back down the street.
As the diggers began filling in the grave, Missie followed him from the cemetery. But she wasn’t thinking of O’Hara and his offer of marriage, nor of Zev Abramski. Like Azaylee, all she wanted was the impossible. She did not want to face tonight’s despairing dreams and tomorrow’s reality. She just wanted to go home to her father.
Istanbul
No one could say that Michael Kazahn was an old man: His eighty years sat as lightly on him as they had his father, and even though his hair was white, it was as thick and luxuriant as when he was twenty. His olive complexion was unlined, his bushy eyebrows and