She walked to the front office, which had just opened. She would have liked to go straight to her apartment without being seen, but she didn't have her key anymore.
“Hi, Angie, I'm back,” she said to the receptionist, smiling as best she could.
“Hi Sonya, we've missed you,” Angie replied as she looked at Sonya's odd outfit and held back a laugh.
“I was at a costume party last night, haven't had a chance to change,” Sonya said, glancing down at her clothes. “Could you give me a copy of the key for my place? I'll pay the new key fee, though I need to get money from inside first. Sorry, I lost it while traveling.”
“Sure, and don't worry about the fee. But you know you're past due on your rent, don't you?”
“Oh, that's right. I forget the date. I'll take care of it soon.”
That bastard Halim didn't pay my rent like he said. I guess he didn't think I'd ever come back, Sonya thought as she walked to her apartment.
She unlocked the door, half expecting bullets to rip through before she even opened it. But nothing happened. Inside, her plants were dead. Otherwise, everything seemed normal.
She went into her bedroom and lifted the mattress. Her journal was still there. Even though she had lived alone for a year, she kept hiding her diary, as she'd always done when she lived with her nosy sisters.
Then she reached up toward the shelf where she kept the box her mother left behind. The box was heavier than she remembered. But it was still taped shut, which Sonya had done when she moved into the apartment.
It didn't look like someone could have opened it and closed it again without ruining the tape or tearing the cardboard.
Sonya tore off the tape, opened the box, and the first thing she saw was the pistol. It was lying right on top of the letters. She was startled to see it, because she hadn't even thought about it for a while.
She picked up the weapon as though it were so delicate it might shatter, like a baby bird or a crystal glass. But the gun was not like those things, of course. It was heavy, solid and powerful.
Maybe it appeared less mysterious since the last time she had looked at it, now that she had shot a similar one with Dmitri on that lovely day by the sea. But the weapon also seemed more sinister after having watched the bloodbath in the hotel and tended to Dmitri's hideous wound.
She imagined the constant fear her mother must have lived with, wondering when murderers might come for her or her children. Maybe her mom used to hide this gun under her nightgown when she got up from bed to peek through the curtains at cars that parked too close to the house.
And then when they finally came for mom, if Dmitri's tale is true, a gun couldn't protect her, not in a car wreck, Sonya thought.
But I didn't come for the gun. I came for knowledge.
Sonya didn't bother to sit on the bed or even to put the gun down. She stood right there, facing into the closet, the pistol in her hand as she pulled out one letter at a time from the box, which she laid on a shelf in front of her.
She read slowly at first. Then faster and faster. The letters were all out of order. Some from shortly before her mother's death, others from before Sonya was born.
Tears fell from her face onto the letters, making the ink run across the paper. She dropped the letters as she finished them. They floated down to the floor like autumn leaves.
What was it Dmitri said, I'll read these letters when I need them? He was right, like always. It's all here.
Letters from Dmitri's father when he was away on business, including instructions on what to do if he were killed. He insisted mom always keep the gun he had given her and taught her to use, even though she hated guns.
Then notes from Dmitri's uncle and that guy he mentioned, Sergei, talking about how young Dmitri was doing over in Russia. They even sent pictures of him and his little soccer uniform.
What madness. To think that my mother kept all this inside of her, for so many years.
As Sonya stood there, mouth agape with shock, she could taste her own tears. She wanted someone to hold her. She wanted Dmitri.
"Oh, you are reading a story?" a man said in a Russian accent.
It was not a voice Sonya recognized.