Chapter 12

“This is a bad idea.”

“Calm down, Meredith.”

“What if we get caught? What if someone calls the cops? We should just go back to Julian’s.” She followed Tatiana, who walked a few feet ahead of her. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into breaking into a cemetery in the middle of the night.”

“That was our deal. Club first, cemetery second.” Tatiana stopped walking and faced Meredith. “You really need to calm down. You’re making me anxious. Why can’t you understand that visiting my sister’s grave is important to me? I understood that visiting the club was important to you.”

“Yes, but now that I’m here I can see that this is a bad idea. What if we get caught?”

“You were gone for a while. Did you fuck him?”

“Who?” Meredith asked, confused.

“Vincent.”

She didn’t understand why Tatiana would think she would. “Of course not.”

“It’s a sex club. Don’t act like that’s the most outrageous question someone has ever asked you.”

“I didn’t. We spoke, but that was it.”

“Did he come up to you? What did you two talk about?”

“He asked me how my studies were coming along. He said he got the information from my guest profile. Is that possible?”

“Did you believe him?”

“I don’t know. Why can’t you just tell me who he is?”

Tatiana started to go through the contents of the clutch purse hanging from her wrist. Meredith watched her put something in her mouth and swallow it.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking a benzo. Snatched a few from Julian. I’d be a wreck without it.”

Meredith shook her head in disapproval.

“I’m not like him. I only take them when I’m in a really bad place,” Tatiana said.

In an attempt to reduce her own agitation, Meredith lit a cigarette. Tatiana asked her for one and Meredith passed her the whole pack. They stood, side by side, two burning red specks in the dark.

“Now, can we focus on finding my sister’s grave?” Tatiana held the shoes in one hand and the cigarette in the other. “This dress is killing me. Tugs in all the wrong places.”

Throwing away what was left of her cigarette, Meredith threaded her arm through Tatiana’s, pulling her close. She guided her toward a grave two rows away from the path they were on.

“We’re here,” Meredith said.

“I can’t see anything.”

Meredith and Pam had been the only two people who attended Sofia’s funeral, so she had a clear memory of the grave’s location. She used the screen of her phone to illuminate the headstone.

“Who paid for her funeral? For everything?” Tatiana asked.

“Your husband was going to but Julian wouldn’t allow it. He took care of it.”

“Did Julian attend?”

Before she had left for the cemetery that day, Tatiana had been in bed, dazed from a high dose of painkillers, and Julian had been sitting in front of the window of his bedroom, staring at the Chicago skyline. The tallest buildings were lost in the morning fog. When Meredith had returned hours later from burying Sofia, Julian had yet to move. She had tried to find the words to console him, but none had felt right.

“He didn’t,” Meredith replied.

They sat on the grass, and Meredith removed her jacket and draped it over herself and Tatiana.

“I remember.” Meredith read out loud the words on the headstone. Julian had been the one who had arranged it so she knew the phrase had come from him. “Do you know what it means?” she asked.

Tatiana didn’t reply.

“Tell me something about Sofia. Anything.”

Tatiana’s silence, together with the stillness of their surroundings, unsettled Meredith.

“She was a great storyteller,” Tatiana said. “When we were sent to live with our aunt in Lawrence, after everything we went through, I started to have really bad nightmares. I’d wake up and cry for hours. But then, she would hide under the covers with me and come up with stories that would go on and on. It always worked. I’d calm down and fall asleep. I wish we had never stopped being that close.”

“What happened?” Being an only child, Meredith couldn’t speak from experience, but she always imagined that if she had siblings, they would always remain best friends.

“She wanted to get as far away as possible. I didn’t. As soon as we turned eighteen she left for Russia. I returned to Chicago. Both of us knew she wasn’t planning to come back so it was an awkward goodbye. Like we were pretending we were going to see each other soon.” Tatiana rested her head on Meredith’s shoulder. “When she called me saying she was back in Chicago I was shocked. I had barely heard from her in the last twelve years. But I was also happy. My twin sister was back.”

“How did Sofia end up at the New Jackson? The place is close to being condemned. Why wouldn’t she stay with you?”

“When she called me she was already living there and I didn’t ask her if she wanted to stay with me. I thought she would be better off away from me and Steven. We were going through a really rough patch. Vicious arguments.”

No one, including Tatiana, knew why Sofia had arrived in the city eight months ago. Meredith had found out, through Colton, that Sofia had boarded a flight in Moscow, destined to Chicago, with one stop in London’s Heathrow Airport. Not one person from her life back in Russia had come forward inquiring about Sofia. At least not yet.

“How did you meet your husband?” Meredith asked.

“I was waitressing at this restaurant; I was nineteen. We got married a year after that.”

“The police said two years ago he filed a missing person’s report for you. What happened?”

Tatiana leaned forward and caressed the dirt on Sofia’s grave. “I got pregnant. I didn’t tell Steven, and I went ahead and had an abortion. He found out. He was so angry. I think more than angry, he was hurt. He felt betrayed.”

“So you left him?”

“He hit me so hard he cracked several of my ribs.” The sound of Tatiana’s voice dropped a notch. “I loved him, but after that I couldn’t stay with him. I hadn’t worked since we got married. I had become a lady of leisure with a monthly allowance from my husband. So I took a chunk of his money, as much as I could get my hands on, and left.”

“But you went back to him.”

“I was living in San Francisco when one morning he showed up at my doorstep. I asked how he found out where I was staying but he refused to tell me. I got the sense he’d find me anywhere I went.” Tatiana grabbed a handful of dirt and held it between her hands. “He apologized. I apologized. At that point we had been married for seven years. We thought we could get over what had happened.”

Tatiana had left her wig in the car, and Meredith kissed her hair. “Knowing what he did to you the night your sister died, I assume you were wrong.”

“It was over for us a long time ago. The fights, the broken furniture, the bruises…it kept getting worse and worse. He couldn’t let me go, and I was too afraid to pack up and leave like I’d done before.” Tatiana pressed her hands tighter together and some of the dirt fell on her lap. “Steven had access to my bank account. He knew exactly how much I spent and saved. I had tried to find a job before, but Steven said he could give me in a day what I’d make in a month at any job I was qualified to do.”

Meredith’s hatred toward Thompson intensified.

“I wanted to have my own money, put all of it aside so I could leave him,” Tatiana continued. “I wanted a new life that didn’t give him the chance to find me. That’s all I wanted, Meredith. To be free from Steven.”

“He hit you from the beginning of your marriage, didn’t he?”

“He’d slap me when we had bad arguments. It got worse after he found out I had the abortion.”

Tatiana opened her hands and the remaining dirt fell on her lap. It had rained earlier, and Meredith smelled the dampness coming from all around them. She didn’t care her dress was getting wet from sitting on the ground.

“I really fucked up, Meredith. Big time. I have nothing. Now that my sister is gone I don’t have anyone either. Every day I wake up and I wonder if it will be the day that Julian kicks me out of his place.”

“I remember the way Julian looked at you the first time he saw you at the club,” Meredith said. “You don’t have to worry about him throwing you out. It’ll be your decision when you leave.”

“Julian’s not that predictable.”

They got quiet and Meredith tried to pick up on the sound of the traffic from the road. There were so deep inside the cemetery she couldn’t hear it.

“Or that honorable,” Tatiana added.

“If he threw you out I’d be there for you.”

“You can’t protect me the way Julian can.”

Meredith wanted to ask her why, but Tatiana continued. “I remember the first time I saw him at The Raven Room. It was still early in the evening, not many people were around. As I walked through the main floor, toward the staircase, I heard a laugh. There wasn’t anything special about it, it was just a laugh, but it made me look toward the bar. I saw this tall man in a dark suit, dressed like almost any other man at the club, talking to Ben. His wavy black hair, the way his body was leaning on the counter, I don’t know…grabbed my attention for a second too long. I went to the bar and, even though there were a few people between us, I managed to get a good look at him. Then he laughed again and I thought: it’s him. It’s Reeve. How did that junky motherfucker end up looking like a million bucks?”

“Did you tell your husband about him?”

“I did. Big mistake. He hates Julian.”

“Because of what happened between you, Julian, and your mom?”

“You’d think, right? But no. Other than my husband, Julian is the only other man I’ve ever loved. That bothers Steven.”

Meredith hadn’t expected such a confession. Julian reserved his most honorable feelings toward Sofia and Tatiana, and it felt right to Meredith that he was as important to Tatiana as she was to him.

“Your husband is bothered by the power that Julian has over you,” Meredith said. “That’s something your husband wants to have just for himself.”

“Both of them have hurt me so much.”

Meredith hugged Tatiana tighter.

“Steven wasn’t the one who killed Sofia,” Tatiana whispered into Meredith’s ear.

“How—”

“I need you to know that,” Tatiana continued. “It’s important to me that you do.”

Tatiana rubbed her dirty palms on her dress and got to her feet. She was halfway down the main path before Meredith realized Tatiana had decided it was time for them to leave.