We’d been sitting for more than an hour in a café located in front of the dog park children’s school. While we’d been searching for a table on the patio, Daria had said something that wouldn’t leave me alone. The way she remarked on the fact that children walked to school by themselves here was suspiciously enthusiastic.
“Get more coffee,” Daria demanded.
Even though an hour remained until the bell that would end the school day, the approach of that moment made Daria tap the chair with her foot, and she gave no indication of tiring. As I went to the counter to order, I checked the people on the street for acquaintances or enemies. I placed the coffees on a tray, carried them back to Daria, and sat back down in my wall seat. My legs ached. I’d spent the morning showing Daria places from Aino’s life. I’d suggested the tour myself, lying and saying that I had the day off. Some of the places were made up, and some were real, like the parents’ offices and the pet store. And the school.
“I’ve started to learn Finnish, by the way,” she said and pulled a grammar book out of her handbag. “Should we practice?”
I took the book, which looked new. Daria leaned in and started reciting sample phrases, too smoothly for a beginner. Occasionally she looked at me, seeking approval of her pronunciation.
“Are you intending to stay here long enough that this is really necessary?”
“We have to have a common language.”
“We?”
“Aino and me, of course. Who else?”
Daria looked at me as if I were stupid. Maybe I was. My vague presentiments were proving true. The previous evening, I’d done some searching online related to children in the areas where I remembered Daria’s former clients living. One incident had caught my attention: an unknown woman had tried to kidnap a child from a playground in a town in Germany. The assailant had been identified as a foreigner, and the newspaper had published a picture of her taken on the phone of a passerby. Anyone who could identify the woman was asked to contact the police. It was obviously Daria. She intended to abduct one of her old client’s children and play house. Why couldn’t she have chosen someone other than Aino? Or did she think it was easier to kidnap a child here than in other countries? I stared at the asphalt under our feet. It was as flat as the surface of a cake in a confectioner’s window, but the ground under my feet was moving as if I were on a train.
“Are you listening?” Daria asked. “You were supposed to correct my mistakes.”
So I began repeating the words from the textbook and occasionally made up my own examples. The message I had sent through Ivan was a bid for time. A bullet to my forehead wouldn’t be an option if you wanted to hear all the details of the secret photography of Lada Kravets’s children. You would have to talk to me. To sit with me for a moment. To look me in the eyes. As I thought of your gaze, I was no longer sure whether the pictures of the Kravets kids would be enough evidence of the danger Daria posed, let alone the news article from Germany, or whether you would grant me a visit based on them. However, if they were enough and you began to suspect Daria, I would have a little more time. Maybe enough to be able to tell you what happened on the day Viktor died. Still, my word had little value. I needed more proof, fast. I had to get Daria to confess. I took a breath.
“How long were you planning Viktor’s murder?”
I presented the question in Finnish, gaining confidence from the mere fact of having succeeded in saying it out loud. Daria didn’t understand or played stupid. I repeated the words in Russian. The foot tapping on the chair stopped. Then she laughed.
“Was that supposed to be a joke?”
“Or was it an accident?” I asked. “Accidents happen. Can’t we finally talk straight?”
“We’re supposed to be practicing,” Daria said and waved the textbook. “I don’t have the energy for your stupid crap.”
“Would you have preferred to take my life instead of Viktor’s? If I were you, I would have,” I said and for a moment was satisfied with my idea. Empathizing with a client’s emotional state. But it didn’t work.
“Have you gone nuts? What are you on about?”
Daria set the book down and looked at me as if she didn’t understand a word I was saying. I hadn’t been able to get her to shoot off her mouth the whole day despite all my coaxing. I’d turned on my recorder again at the counter, and it was still in my pocket documenting our pointless conversation. I wasn’t going to get her to confess. She wouldn’t admit to anything. She was made of sterner stuff than I’d hoped. She was a smooth enamel surface I couldn’t get a grip on. I watched as she sampled her latte as if considering what it was missing, until she seemed to realize something.
“Wait…are you trying to pin the blame for your sins on me?”
“Don’t start with me. I saw what you did.”
Taking her by the wrist, I squeezed hard.
“What if I sent Ladka the pictures you took of her kid?” Daria asked. “Or Veles. Maybe even to him. Wouldn’t the Man from Donetsk be the right address?”
“I didn’t take them.”
“Who will believe that?”
My grip on Daria broke. I shouldn’t have called Ivan. I realized immediately what a mistake I had made. I was blamed for Viktor’s death. Ivan had wondered why I hadn’t killed all of the Kravetses. No one would have come after me then. The logic was flawless. I had a motive. If Daria carried out her threat, you would instantly think that my quest for vengeance was still ongoing, that I hadn’t had my fill. I didn’t have anything to prove that it was Daria who had taken the pictures, and if Daria got a chance to talk, she would claim that I was trying to set her up.
“Veles would send a whole army after you and your family,” Daria said, her voice rising.
My hand looked like plaster frozen on the table. I searched for my fingerless gloves in my bag without finding them and ultimately shoved my hands between my thighs to warm them up. I couldn’t get the conversation back in the right lane anymore.
“And guess what? It would serve you right.”
Daria’s phone rested next to her coffee cup. Our argument had made her forget the seraphic curls visible on the display. During our coffee, Daria had repeatedly looked at Aino’s face, kissing the glass like an icon. But now the screen went dark, and she didn’t notice as the anger took over and she began to recount the reasons why I should be hunted to the ends of the earth. Daria listed the names. The girls I had forgotten and the girls I had never met. The girls who had been injected with more hormones than they would have been in, say, London. Girls who got sick. Girls whose ovaries had been removed. Girls who had suffered complications or whose uteruses had been punctured accidentally. Girls who had returned to the infertility clinics, but not as donors, as clients. Girls whose well-being no one tracked once they had fallen out of the agency’s catalogs. Daria had obviously been reading American propaganda sites. There were activists there for everything, and as if on cue she began to tell me about participating in a meeting for anonymous donors in New York. The number of her fellow victims had surprised Daria, as had how many of them came from Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Romania, the rest of Eastern Europe. Most had begun as donors in their home countries, and then after doing jobs abroad had stayed in America because the pay was better. Not everyone was doing well, and no one had health insurance. Some of the girls had only donated once but still got breast cancer that wasn’t present in their families. That was a coincidence, I said. Daria snorted. There were too many cases for chance.
The students at the table next to us cast us long glances—you didn’t need to speak the language to interpret Daria’s tone. We were attracting the wrong kind of attention. I smiled at them apologetically. Startled, the group turned away. In my head, I thanked the Finns for their courtesy. The preaching began to dry out Daria’s throat, so she finished her coffee and checked the time on her phone.
“I didn’t understand why the hell you chose me for Viktor, until I realized that you simply didn’t care. The Kravetses chose the prettiest face, and that happened to be me, and you didn’t dare to tell them no.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“That’s enough of this nonsense. Aino is getting out of school soon,” Daria said and stood up, knocking over the chair. “You aren’t going to spoil this moment.”
The other customers turned to look at us, and a passing woman stopped. My neighbor. Her face looked swollen, and her jacket was loose. Pregnant. Definitely pregnant. She raised her hand in greeting. I nodded and picked up Daria’s chair. I’d gone too far. My phone was still recording, for nothing. I would try again later. I looked at Daria, whose lower lip was trembling. Taking her by the sleeve, I asked whether she wanted to hear something about Finnish primary education, about the subjects Aino was studying.
Daria sat back down.
“What are you supposed to know about that?”
“I know that Finland has the best school system in the world.”
The children rushing from school to celebrate the weekend made Daria perk up. She seemed to forget our quarrel and trembled when she spotted Aino’s blond head. Aino started running toward the dog park woman, who looked so athletic in her sand-colored spring jacket. So fit and healthy.
“What is that woman doing here?” Daria asked. “Isn’t Aino supposed to walk home from school alone?”
“Maybe she got off work early.”
Unconsciously I had taken Daria by the hand, and we watched Aino and her mother disappear into the crowd on the street like it was a dramatic thriller. I didn’t like that Daria was referring to the dog park family’s children by their first names. We were never supposed to call children by their real names too soon. Even so, Daria’s habit began to wear off on me. I caught myself thinking of the girl as Aino and the boy as Väinö.
“I don’t hate you. I’ve never hated you,” Daria said. “And right now, I don’t hate anyone but that woman.”
And I hated her, too. I hated everything that she could give her children. I hated that she had a fat paycheck, new spring jackets, money for a hairdresser, and a father for her kids. I hated how she left empty bottles by the trash cans for people like me to pick up for the deposit, because she didn’t need those pennies, and I hated how friends called her constantly and how she and her husband walked hand in hand. Anger united me with Daria for a moment, and Daria felt it.
“Did I sell my child? Did I really sell her?” she suddenly asked. “To that bitch?”
“Aino isn’t your child.”
Daria pulled her hand away.
“I thought you understood me. I can handle my business without you.”
I didn’t ask what she was talking about. I didn’t need to. The family traditionally started their summer cottage season in the spring. I hadn’t told Daria about that and wondered whether she knew where the family had spent the last few weekends. Abducting a child in the middle of the forest would be nothing. But she didn’t know. Otherwise she would already be renting a car.
“I think the trip to school is the best option,” Daria said. “We’ll take Aino first thing in the morning, and you’ll notify the teacher that she’s sick. That way no one will notice her disappearance until the afternoon.”
Daria stood up. She wanted to buy Aino some clothes, and she thought we could get the shopping done before it was time to go to the dog park. I pointed out that we should take a break from the park visits or we would attract too much attention. My objections didn’t interest Daria. She simply didn’t seem to be able to get enough of watching the family, and I wasn’t sure whether that was a result of yearning or whether she was building up her anger against the parents whose happiness she intended to steal. Or maybe her certainty of their impending ruin gave her pleasure, and she was trying to get as much out of it as she could.
“Come on,” she said and turned to look at me with the same smile on her face that she had given me after strangling Viktor. When she realized that I would be blamed for everything, there had been no limit to her triumph. Now the reason for the grin was different, though. I was on her leash, and she knew it.
All I could do was follow, and as I did, I connected what Ivan had said to what Daria was telling me now, and what was between the lines. Daria had threatened me with the idea that Veles’s men would hunt me and my family to the ends of the earth. But why hadn’t Veles done that after his son’s death? Why hadn’t the SUVs watched my aunt’s house for longer? Why had Ivan only been interrogated for appearances, not in more detail or more than once? I had imagined that was because of you, but what if I had misinterpreted everything? Lada had personally supervised the investigation into Viktor’s death. So Daria claimed. And what if Lada was the one who approved your careless inquiries? And what if she had even encouraged that approach? Did I have her to thank for everything? Lada Kravets didn’t want anyone to do much digging. She had her reasons.
Maybe I just wanted to believe that you had let me go out of pity or mercy. Or love.