piroshkis; we took Clara to the aquarium. On Friday evening, the Fourth, we rode a ferry to Bainbridge Island, just Stas and me—Clara was asleep at the house of our hosts. From a blanket on the waterfront beach, we watched the fireworks over Eagle Harbor.
Lying there with my husband’s arm around me, my head on his shoulder, the fireworks bursting against the black sky, it came to me that I was happier than I had ever been. And yet this happiness didn’t feel the way I’d always imagined it would. It felt fearful and precarious. As if it might be taken from me at any moment.
I hadn’t really considered our situation until now, hadn’t let myself consider it. Being here in Seattle allowed me to look at it sidelong; it was the distance between us and the detective. We hadn’t seen him during the last week or two, but I knew his work on Jack’s case was far from over. He was investigating a murder. It didn’t get more serious than that. He wasn’t going to just give up and go away for good. He would be back and likely it was just a matter of time before something tipped him off to Stas’ involvement. Wasn’t that the way it always happened? In books and in movies, the killer always made some slight and yet fatal mistake.
If Stas was caught—oh, it made my throat tight just to think about it—if he were caught, then he would be taken away from me for decades, maybe even forever. And just like that, overnight, I’d be a single mother with an infant and a toddler. I’d be alone with the two of them twenty-fours a day, seven days a week—at least for the next several years, until they were old enough for school.
But no. No, of course it wouldn’t be like that. As staggering a thought as that was, it was sheer wishful thinking next to the certain reality that I’d have to go back to work, and Clara and her brother would be in some cheap wretched day care unless the rest of my family was willing to treat me as a perpetual charity case.
And Stas. Stas would be locked away. In some terrifying, hard-core facility for violent inmates. I tried to imagine visiting him in such a place. Hauling the kids on some unspeakable hours-long car trip every few weekends to the hellhole where their father was caged. I imagined the humiliation, the isolation, of having a husband behind bars. And not for corporate fraud, or embezzlement, or writing bad checks, but for murder. I would no longer be seen as having married an enterprising, bootstrapping, self-made young man. He’d be just another Russian thug.
I started to hyperventilate and had to sit up. In a moment, I felt Stas’ hand on my shoulder.
“What is it, Leda?”
“I just—oh God—I just felt so nauseous all of a sudden.”
Stas accepted this, as I knew he would. I was pregnant, after all. I made myself slow my breathing and after a moment, I lay back down.
What if we went on the lam? Now, before Stas was even wanted by the law? We were so near the Canadian border. We could cross it and just keep going. And then what? If we were a young and childless couple, we could do anything. We could be migrant workers on a farm or deck hands on a ship. We could go wherever the wind took us, wend our way through Europe, reinvent our lives. We could start over, as Stas seemed so adept at doing.
But none of this could be done with a one-year-old in tow and a baby on the way.
Maybe Stas could strike out on his own, set himself up somewhere and send for us later. He wouldn’t need an I.D. to buy an Amtrak ticket. He could cross the country by train, disappear into Brighton Beach, give up his hard-won English and his hopes for American citizenship. He could get the kind of job offered by men like Vladimir: off the books and paying in cash.
We could join him later—a year or so later, maybe. In the meantime, I’d tell the detective Stas had left me and I didn’t know where he was. I’d give birth in a hospital while I still had health insurance. I would drain my bank
Lying there with my husband’s arm around me, my head on his shoulder, the fireworks bursting against the black sky, it came to me that I was happier than I had ever been. And yet this happiness didn’t feel the way I’d always imagined it would. It felt fearful and precarious. As if it might be taken from me at any moment.
I hadn’t really considered our situation until now, hadn’t let myself consider it. Being here in Seattle allowed me to look at it sidelong; it was the distance between us and the detective. We hadn’t seen him during the last week or two, but I knew his work on Jack’s case was far from over. He was investigating a murder. It didn’t get more serious than that. He wasn’t going to just give up and go away for good. He would be back and likely it was just a matter of time before something tipped him off to Stas’ involvement. Wasn’t that the way it always happened? In books and in movies, the killer always made some slight and yet fatal mistake.
If Stas was caught—oh, it made my throat tight just to think about it—if he were caught, then he would be taken away from me for decades, maybe even forever. And just like that, overnight, I’d be a single mother with an infant and a toddler. I’d be alone with the two of them twenty-fours a day, seven days a week—at least for the next several years, until they were old enough for school.
But no. No, of course it wouldn’t be like that. As staggering a thought as that was, it was sheer wishful thinking next to the certain reality that I’d have to go back to work, and Clara and her brother would be in some cheap wretched day care unless the rest of my family was willing to treat me as a perpetual charity case.
And Stas. Stas would be locked away. In some terrifying, hard-core facility for violent inmates. I tried to imagine visiting him in such a place. Hauling the kids on some unspeakable hours-long car trip every few weekends to the hellhole where their father was caged. I imagined the humiliation, the isolation, of having a husband behind bars. And not for corporate fraud, or embezzlement, or writing bad checks, but for murder. I would no longer be seen as having married an enterprising, bootstrapping, self-made young man. He’d be just another Russian thug.
I started to hyperventilate and had to sit up. In a moment, I felt Stas’ hand on my shoulder.
“What is it, Leda?”
“I just—oh God—I just felt so nauseous all of a sudden.”
Stas accepted this, as I knew he would. I was pregnant, after all. I made myself slow my breathing and after a moment, I lay back down.
What if we went on the lam? Now, before Stas was even wanted by the law? We were so near the Canadian border. We could cross it and just keep going. And then what? If we were a young and childless couple, we could do anything. We could be migrant workers on a farm or deck hands on a ship. We could go wherever the wind took us, wend our way through Europe, reinvent our lives. We could start over, as Stas seemed so adept at doing.
But none of this could be done with a one-year-old in tow and a baby on the way.
Maybe Stas could strike out on his own, set himself up somewhere and send for us later. He wouldn’t need an I.D. to buy an Amtrak ticket. He could cross the country by train, disappear into Brighton Beach, give up his hard-won English and his hopes for American citizenship. He could get the kind of job offered by men like Vladimir: off the books and paying in cash.
We could join him later—a year or so later, maybe. In the meantime, I’d tell the detective Stas had left me and I didn’t know where he was. I’d give birth in a hospital while I still had health insurance. I would drain my bank
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