Chapter Forty-One

 

Abby stood with Fides outside Evgeny’s apartment building. Twilight had fallen on Deva, softening the edges of dilapidated brick buildings and carrying the sounds of children playing soccer in the streets through heavy air. Abby checked her camera one last time then smiled at Fides.

“It’s going to be okay.”

She nodded and let her breath out slowly. “What if I don’t want to know?”

“You already know.”

Fides swallowed hard. “I’m ready.”

When they got to the apartment, Fides put the key into the deadbolt lock, but Abby stopped her. “We need to knock. I think I need to be invited inside.”

“What are you, a vampire?”

“For legal reasons.”

Fides put the key back into her purse and knocked on the door. A few minutes later, it opened, and Evgeny stood on the other side. He was holding a bottle of beer in one hand, and his grip tightened when he saw who his visitors were. His gaze settled on the bruise on Abby’s face, the stitches on her temple, and the tape bandaging her injured shoulder sticking out of her collar.

“He really did it,” Evgeny said, the dismay evident on his face.

“Mr. Popescu, you should know I’m recording you,” Abby said, pointing to the video camera.

“I see. Come inside.”

Abby looked at Fides, who nodded slightly. They stepped into the apartment and followed Evgeny to the kitchen. There was a small table with three chairs, and the women sat down.

“Would you like a beer?”

“No,” Fides said curtly.

“Sure,” Abby replied with less tension even though she was a bundle of knots inside. At least it would be a weapon if she needed it.

He grabbed two bottles from the fridge, one for Abby and one for himself, and sat down across from her. He put his arm on the table and wrapped his palm with his girlfriend’s, lacing his fingers through hers. “When did it happen?”

“Two nights ago.”

“Are you in pain?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t going to give him more information than was absolutely necessary.

“They did it to steal the footage.” His English was much better than Abby remembered, and now she knew for certain why he had spoken in Romanian during their first meeting. “I told them it was a bad idea. That you would not be intimidated. It looks like I was right.”

“Looks like.”

“You know, there are many sports people claim are the loneliest. Tennis. Golf. Swimming and running. But I think it’s gymnastics.”

Fides appeared enraged by the topic, but Abby only asked, “Why?”

“In tennis, someone is hitting the ball back at you. They could make a mistake, or hit the perfect shot. Take the competition out of your hands. In golf, there are the elements to deal with, every course is different. Professionals have a caddy. There is always a scapegoat.”

“What about swimming and running?”

“Perhaps that is you versus the field, but there is very little danger involved. It is not necessary to conquer your fear along with the competition. There is conditioning and the hope that today you race your best, but you will never have to try something you have not been able to complete in order to win. You only swim or run, the same way you have always swam or run. Not so with gymnastics. Gymnastics takes more than talent and practice. It takes courage and mental toughness not normally found in most people, never mind little girls. The conditions never change, and the competition only gets better. There is only you and a piece of equipment and the knowledge that unless you are perfect, you cannot possibly win.”

“So why do it?”

“Because not everybody is ordinary. And there is nothing like the feeling when you win.”

“How did Ileana handle the pressure?”

“As well as could be expected. She had the extra weight of living up to her sister’s high standard, but she loved doing gymnastics, and she was a joy to coach.”

Abby didn’t understand how he could sit there and talk about Ileana as if he weren’t responsible for her death. She didn’t know if she sensed true remorse or regret, but he did seem to genuinely care for the girl.

“I never met her,” Abby said, trying to gain her bearings and a sense of reality. At the moment, everything felt fuzzy. “That’s what everyone says about her, though.”

“She was one of those kids who drew you to her,” Evgeny explained. “You wanted to watch her. She was magic.”

Fides banged her closed fist against the table, the sound loud and so sudden the other two jumped. Her voice was desperate and low when she asked, “So why did you kill her?”

“What?” Evgeny asked, completely astonished at both her tone and content.

“I’m sorry, but I cannot take it anymore.” She ran her hands through her hair and began bouncing her legs up and down on the balls of her feet. “I have to know. I have to know the truth.”

“Fides, it was an accident,” he said earnestly.

“No,” she exclaimed, pulling away from him. She stood up quickly, backing away from the kitchen table. Evgeny stood up as well, but he did not take a step forward. “An accident would be if you were spotting her and dropped her when she was falling. An accident would be if you forgot to check the equipment to make sure it was safe and she hurt herself. This was not an accident.”

“I didn’t want her to get hurt,” he insisted again.

“She was a little girl. She was so small. She was down on her hands and knees, crying, scraped up from attempting a trick you knew she couldn’t do, but you made her try anyway,” Fides said. “And when she was down, when she was hurt and crying, you kicked her. Twice. In the back.” She demonstrated by banging her foot against the cabinet door below the sink. She rammed it hard enough with her toes that it splintered off the hooks. In flip flops, it must have stung, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Then she looked up at you with big, innocent brown eyes, and she wasn’t even mad. She wasn’t scared. She was sorry she disappointed you, and she asked for your forgiveness. But you’re so bitter and hateful that you couldn’t look past your own bad luck and stop yourself.”

“You’re worried about her pain?” Evgeny asked. “Let me tell you something, Ileana had no idea what pain really was. Neither do you.”

“You want to know what pain is, take a long look into Beatrix Dalca’s eyes,” Fides said, her voice shaking. “Then you might begin to understand real pain.”

“Ileana had a gift, and she was pissing it away, spending her time worrying about friendships and boys and fashion and where she might travel with her sister rather than perfecting her routine. She came to Deva to be a champion. It was my job to train her.”

“Job well done,” Fides said.

“I cared about her.”

“You were using her to get out of Deva and out of Romania. But when it looked like she wouldn’t be able to deliver—”

“As if that is not the exact same reason why you wanted to be my girlfriend,” he interrupted, yelling over her voice.

“But when it looked like Ileana wasn’t going to be the world-beating gymnast you hoped, you killed her.”

“You don’t know what it was like,” Evgeny said, attempting self-control. “When that taxi hit me, it stole my dream, it stole my life. It was supposed to be me preparing for a shot at Olympic gold. Instead, I am stuck in this tiny apartment, living off painkillers and trying to care what happens to those stupid, untalented children, none of whom will ever understand the work it takes to make it to the top.”

“I’m not talking about all the girls. I’m only talking about one,” Fides said. Her lip quivered, but she did not cry. “There’s no pity in your heart, no warmth, so after she looked up at you, begging for forgiveness, you grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet. She stumbled, and you grabbed her head and slammed it against the beam.”

“I told you, I was trying to train her.”

“No. First you said it was an accident, then you said you were trying to train her, and then you said you were tired of dealing with girls who had no work ethic and even less talent. So which is it?”

Evgeny finally had no response, and even through the camera, Abby could clearly see the look of despair in his eyes.

“Ileana curled into a ball on the floor. You knew her arm was already hurt, so you stomped on it.” Fides lifted her leg and twice pounded her foot hard against cheap tile, shaking the table legs. “Her thin arm snapped like a twig. That should have been enough for you. If you really thought she didn’t have what it took to be a gymnast and you were angry with her, it really should have been enough. Instead, you sneered at a little girl who was whimpering, broken, and you demanded she stand.”

“How do you know all this?”

Fides did not respond to his question. “She followed your instructions. Because despite what you believed, despite the apparently unforgivable shortcoming of having the same interests as other girls her age and desiring more than a one-dimensional existence, she did want to be the best, and she trusted you. She loved you. Disappointing you was worse than the physical pain, so she stood up. With one arm, she heaved herself onto the balance beam. But she was dizzy, and she once again slipped to the ground.”

“It happened fast,” Evgeny whispered. “I know it sounds awful, but to me, it happened fast.”

“It did not. If Ileana were here, she would tell you exactly how slowly it happened. She would tell you the agony of falling off the beam and landing on her broken arm. She would tell you how sincerely she believed if she could only stand up and prove to you how tough she was, how dedicated, you would find forgiveness in your heart. Her arm would heal, and everything would go back to normal. Ileana would tell you how the moments when you were viciously kicking her chest and stomach and she had no way to protect herself were endless.” There was a snag in her voice, and Fides began to cry. Watching her confront Evgeny, hearing her recount the details even if they were secondhand, was heartbreaking. More than when Martina told the story, suddenly the attack seemed real. Because Evgeny had no answer for what she was saying, and he was making no attempts to deny it.

“Then Ileana was standing in front of you, a foot shorter but cut down to even less, shaking, weeping, her arm broken and her insides bleeding.” Fides stepped forward so she was only inches from Evgeny. She put her hand around the back of his neck and yanked it. The venom in her voice pierced through her tears. “You grabbed her head and bashed it against the balance beam. She hit the ground. Maybe it took her a whole day to die, but she was gone in that moment. You took her.”

He said again, “It happened so fast.”

Fides shook her head. “Even though what you did was reprehensible, even though what you did makes me sick all over, it’s not the worst part. The worst part is after it happened, instead of standing up like a man and telling the truth, you covered the whole thing up. You let the Dalcas suffer the anguish of not knowing what happened to Ileana. You bullied children into thinking they would be kicked out the program, their dreams ruined, possibly even hurt if they spoke.” She pointed at Abby and raised her voice. “You allowed a complete stranger, the only person in this whole mess who wanted nothing but to do the right thing for the family, to get attacked and injured in order to keep the truth from coming out. But the truth always comes out, Evgeny. Eventually, the truth always comes out.”

“I didn’t want to cover it up,” Evgeny shouted, pushing Fides away. Abby jumped to her feet, ready to put her body between the two or pull her out of the apartment if necessary. Evgeny kept his distance. “I wanted to tell the truth. People would have understood.”

“No one made you lie,” Fides countered.

“Andrei Tatarescu did.”

“How?”

“He told me if I said a word, he would make sure I spent the rest in my life in jail. He said with my injury and then this, I was single-handedly bringing down Romanian sports. It was only since Trixie came on the scene that we began to make up some ground after trailing far behind the Americans and Chinese for many years. We’d lose an entire generation and might never recover. My choices were to either keep my mouth shut or take the fall for disrupting training that was working for the first time in a decade.”

“You’re a coward,” Fides said. “What you did is no different than if you had tied blocks to her feet and sunk her dead body to the bottom of the ocean. Not only that, you’ve been lying to me for months. I believed you. You told me it was an accident. You swore to me you would never hurt anyone, much less a child.”

“I didn’t mean to do it.”

“Don’t you understand? Nothing you can say means anything. You’re a liar and a murderer, and you’re going to burn.”

Fides slapped him in the face and stormed out of the apartment, leaving Evgeny and Abby alone in the kitchen. Her absence was like a vacuum, sucking the air and energy out the door with her. Eventually he looked up from the floor and into the camera.

“What are you going to do now?”

“Is everything Fides said about how Ileana died true?”

“How did she know?”

“I guess not all your pupils want the life of a gymnast after all.”

“Martina,” he said, nodding. “Yes. It’s true.”

“What about Tatarescu being the one to orchestrate the cover-up?”

“Yes,” he said again, this time so softly it was barely audible.

“I’m going to talk to the police,” Abby said, doing her best to keep a brave face even though she was afraid he might go off his rocker at any moment. “I’ll tell them everything I know.”

“When?”

“As soon as I can. Tomorrow morning.”

“Tatarescu will be angry. He will do whatever he can to ruin your credibility.”

“I’m sure he will. But he can’t.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because unlike you, I have the truth on my side.”

Miraculously, the corners of his mouth turned upward for a second in a knowing smile. “I suppose you do.”

“Are you going to run?”

“Where would I go?”

“I’m leaving now.”

“Do you know what it’s like for all your dreams to come crashing down around you in a split second?”

“No. I don’t. But I’m all grown up, and my dreams are simple and small.”

“That’s what I thought, too.”

Abby nodded and lowered her camera so she could look directly at him. “Do you feel guilty?”

“Every second of every day.”

Abby turned to leave, but before she could open the door, Evgeny asked, “Do you?”

Abby did not turn around. “Yes.” She quietly turned the knob and left a murderer’s apartment. The mystery was solved, the truth was out, but Abby did not feel victorious. The Dalcas remained shattered, Fides’ world was turned upside down, Shaye was still ashamed of her father, and fighting to prove herself to the world, Cruz was gone, and Evgeny . . .

Nothing would ever excuse what Evgeny had done, but she understood him more than she liked to admit. They were both second-rate, and though she’d been fortunate enough for good luck to shape most of her life, she couldn’t help but be aware it was only a twist of fate that bad luck had shaped his. No, they weren’t so different. They both had much to answer for.

He could go first.