CHAPTER FOUR
“Are you disappointed in me, too?”
Ilya’s words had echoed in Theresa’s dreams all night long, and she couldn’t figure out why.
She woke without being rested. She’d intended to stay in the guest bedroom that she’d used the last time she slept here, but it had been full of construction supplies for the repairs she knew Ilya’s younger brother, Niko, was doing. The bed had been covered in boxes, while tools and paint cans had been scattered on the floor. The couch in the Sterns’ den wasn’t the most comfortable in the world, but it was better than the backseat of her car, which was where she’d been sleeping for the past two weeks.
Theresa had spent the past nine months or so crashing on couches and guest rooms with a series of excuses to her friends, all so she didn’t have to tell them the truth. She didn’t have an apartment to go to, and she couldn’t afford a hotel room. She could barely afford to cover her cell-phone bill or buy gas. There were only so many stories she could tell her friends, and only so many friends to tell the stories to.
She’d planned to wake up before anyone else did and slip out so she could avoid any questions. She must’ve been more exhausted than she thought, because what woke her was not the soft bleat of the alarm on her phone but the sizzle and smell of bacon frying and the sputter of coffee brewing. Theresa stretched and sat, noticing the light slatting through the blinds. It was late.
“Hey.” Niko stood in the doorway, his hair sleep rumpled and a mug of coffee in his hand. “Good morning.”
“Morning.”
He didn’t look surprised to see her crashing there, which either said a lot or not much at all. The idea that she somehow belonged there enough not to cause speculation felt strange and yet oddly comforting. Theresa yawned behind her hand and took the elastic from her hair to redo the messy bun. Her mouth tasted like an ashtray, which was stupid since she hadn’t smoked a cigarette in years.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Almost eleven. Ilya’s still passed out.”
She’d expected as much. They hadn’t gotten home until after two, and he’d been pretty hammered. “I gave him a ride home last night . . . it was late. I crashed on the couch. I hope that’s cool.”
Niko lifted the mug. “It’s not my house, but I don’t imagine it’s going to be an issue. Coffee’s in the kitchen.”
She swung her legs over the edge of the couch, very aware that she wore a sloppy T-shirt and a pair of pj bottoms with pineapples on them. The pajamas alone spoke to at least some level of intent or advance preparation for a sleepover, but if Niko noticed, he wasn’t pointing it out, and she wasn’t going to bring it up.
“Thanks.” She shuffled past him into the kitchen and helped herself to a mug, adding sugar and cream and sipping with a grateful sigh. Sometimes the worst part of everything was how hard it was to get coffee in the morning. She let the heat bathe her face, aware the Niko had come into the kitchen behind her. “Where’s Galina?”
“No idea. She wasn’t home last night.”
Surprised, Theresa turned. “No?”
“She has a new friend. Or more than one. Who knows? She does her own thing.” Niko smiled and shrugged. He offered her the plate of bacon, setting it back on the counter after she’d taken a piece.
Theresa crunched the bacon, tilting her head at the flavor, and sipped the coffee, contemplating this. “Huh. Turkey bacon?”
“Yeah . . . my mother’s finding her religious roots. No pig allowed.” Niko laughed.
“Wow.” Theresa knew that Galina had taken on some of the Jewish traditions after her mother’s death, but this seemed a little more extreme. “She’s keeping kosher?”
“In her own way. An observant person wouldn’t think so.”
“What do you think about it?” Theresa nibbled again on the strip of turkey bacon. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t like eating real bacon. On the other hand, she wasn’t too proud to turn down a free breakfast.
Niko turned off the burner and slid the pan off the heat, then took a drink from his coffee. “I lived on a kibbutz for years. It’s not like I don’t know how to keep kosher.”
That wasn’t exactly what she’d meant. Theresa studied him. “Are you religious now?”
Niko laughed, shaking his head. “Oh, far from it. No, I’ve never been. I chose to live at Beit Devorah, so it was respectful to follow the rules, but it was never anything I felt mattered to me, personally. I traveled too much to keep kosher and observe Shabbat, at least if I wanted to eat and get anywhere on time.”
“I don’t know much about it,” she admitted.
Niko shrugged. “It’s complicated. But if my mother wants to decide she’s going to be religiously observant, I’m not going to argue with her about it.”
“No. I wouldn’t, either. From what I remember about her, it’s not likely you’d win.” Theresa had finished half her mug without thinking much about it, and she went to refill it. She breathed in the steam, grateful for this simple thing, this comfort she didn’t need to struggle for.
Niko took a carton of eggs from the fridge, along with a stick of butter. He pulled a pan from the cupboard. “Scrambled?”
“Yeah. Sure.” She put a hand on her stomach, feeling the hollowness there. Her last full meal had been a grilled chicken salad at lunch yesterday. “You have any bread? I can make toast. Oh, how about potatoes? Hash browns? I can cut up some onions.”
“Check out the freezer. I think there are some frozen breakfast potatoes in there.”
Niko moved aside a bit so she could also put out a frying pan and add a thin layer of oil. She spread out the frozen potatoes while Niko took care of the eggs. He whisked them with a little milk, some garlic, and some chopped scallion.
“Fancy,” Theresa said, watching.
Niko laughed. “Where I lived, everyone had assigned turns to work in the kitchen, no matter what other job you had. The idea was that you’d appreciate it so much more if you understood the amount of work it takes to feed people.”
“It’s a good skill to have.” She took his place at the stove to turn over the potatoes, then gave him space to finish the eggs. “So how long are you planning to hang around? Are you going back overseas?”
He glanced at her as he set three plates on the table. “No. I’m staying here. The house needs a bunch of repairs, stuff I can handle so Ilya doesn’t have to. Or my mother, I guess, since she’s set on staying here, too. I have a little bit of time before I have to get a job. I’m going to guess that finding a permanent job as a beekeeper around here isn’t going to happen, so I’ll have to look for something else. That’s one thing I’ll say about the kibbutz. You were guaranteed a job, a place to live, food, clothing. Made things easier.”
“Is that what you did? Keep bees?” For some reason this delighted her.
“Yeah, that’s where I settled. How long have you been doing this real estate development stuff?”
Less than a year, she thought. A job born of desperation and necessity, cobbled together out of her own grasping, clutching, and climbing. There were days when she tried to be proud of what she’d begun and how well she’d succeeded at it so far, relatively speaking. Maybe she’d be able to feel that way once she no longer had to sleep in her on-the-verge-of-breaking-down car because she couldn’t get the credit approval to rent an apartment.
“I worked a bunch of different jobs while I was in college, to help pay my way, and by the time I graduated, I figured out I was really good at organization, completing tasks, keeping people on track, putting things together that might not have been the obvious way. I was not very good at accounting, which is what I got my degree in, so I moved around for a while, trying to find a place that fit. I tried retail, real estate, insurance sales, even some multilevel marketing.” She shuddered at that, remembering, and Niko laughed. “Then about three years ago, I started working for Diamond Development in their human resources department, then in their research and development department.”
She didn’t mention that she’d also dated and then subsequently broken the heart of the company’s owner, and that had begun the downward spiral that had led her to where she was right now.
“I realized,” she said after a second, “that I was really good at making connections between people who had things other people wanted to buy or build or make. So here I am.”
“Cool.”
They both sat at the table. She ran her fingers over the scarred top, remembering the pattern of scratches and gouges. Galina had been putting Niko to work repairing and refurbishing a lot of things in this old house, but she hadn’t replaced any of the furniture. Theresa circled the dark ring in the center.
“This is from the time Ilya wanted to make popcorn, and he caught the pan on fire. He set it down here.”
Niko looked at it, then at her. “Yeah. I’d forgotten that. How did you remember it?”
“I only actually lived here for about six months, so I guess you have a lot more memories of this house to sort through than I do. The things that happened here stuck kind of hard. When I come back here . . .” She looked around the kitchen. “I feel kind of like I’m a teenager again.”
“Yowch,” Niko said. “That can’t be great.”
She laughed softly. “It wasn’t all bad. There was Babulya. Living as part of your family was certainly a strong influence on me, no doubt about that. Everything we go through makes us who we become. Right?”
His brow furrowed. “Yeah. You got that right.”
They dug in to the food, eating in silence for a few moments. Theresa chewed slowly, savoring it, enjoying the flavors and also filling her stomach gradually. This meal could last her until dinner, if she ate enough. She could save her stock of granola bars and the giant jar of peanut butter for another time.
Niko pushed back from the table with a satisfied groan and rubbed his belly. “That was good. I’m stuffed. So, hey, what happened last night?”
“Hmm?” She paused to show him that her mouth was full, hoping to avoid this conversation, but Niko seemed happy enough to wait until she’d finished chewing and swallowing to get an answer. “Oh, I was meeting with your brother to see if I could convince him to just sign the damned deal already. Get him out of the dive shop before they really start getting to work. I tried to tell him that it’s not going to go well for him. They’re totally capable of making his business completely fail.”
She used to think Wayne’s ability to destroy other people’s lives in the pursuit of his own goals was his worst character trait, until she’d learned how easy it could be, when it came down to self-preservation.
“Shit.” Niko looked stricken. “You think so?”
“They’re planning to break ground on the hotel in a couple weeks, and the condos before that. Ilya is asking for more money and guarantees about the shop, which there’s no way they’re going to honor. I tried to tell him. He wouldn’t listen.” She took her last swig of coffee and sat back from the table to admit defeat in the face of all that food.
“More money,” Niko said. “Figures.”
“All I can say is that he’s got three weeks to take their offer or they’re no longer going to honor it, and I fought to extend it that long. If he doesn’t take the deal, they move on with construction, and it’s not going to work out very well for him.”
“He’s going to hold on to his forty percent,” Niko said. “He’s stubborn.”
“That forty percent gives him the shop, the parking lot, and access to the docks and underwater fixtures but doesn’t prevent them from making it impossible for anyone to get to the shop, or if they start tearing things down or removing them and not replacing them . . .” Theresa shrugged. “There won’t be any customers to take lessons.”
The ceiling creaked overhead. Both of them looked up. Niko smiled, and after a few seconds, she did, too, even though she didn’t much feel like it.
“In three weeks,” Theresa said, “none of this will be my problem anymore. But I sure wish he’d change his mind before then.”