“Look, I know things are all hot and happy in your house these days, but you can’t end the book this way.”
Vlad popped a gluten-free cracker in his mouth as he looked up from his notes the next afternoon at Colton’s. While he and the Bros plotted out the rest of the book, Elena was meeting the Loners at Alexis’s café to talk about cats and Russian tea cakes or something. Then they would join the guys to watch the next Stanley Cup game.
Vlad had been feeling pretty good about life and the book so far, until now. “Why not?”
Mack twisted off the top of a beer. “Because there’s no conflict. She just up and decides that she’s going to stay with Tony because he asks her to? It’s not very satisfying.”
“They end up together. How is that not satisfying?”
“Because they haven’t really earned their happy ever after,” Malcolm said.
Mack pointed with his beer. “Thank you. Yes. You ever get to the end of a book where they end up together without having to overcome any significant obstacles? It sucks. You feel cheated.”
Malcolm reached for the bag of crackers, tossed one in his mouth, and immediately spit it out. “This tastes like an Amazon box.”
Vlad bristled. “They have faced a ton of obstacles. They’ve been nearly shot, and they were chased by the SS, and—”
Del shook his head. “Those are external problems, man. External obstacles. You have to make them face their internal fears before they can truly have a happy ending.” He reached for the crackers. “Let me try one.”
“It’s your taste buds,” Malcolm warned.
Del took a bite and spit it out. “I’d rather shit my pants.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Vlad snapped. “It is not funny when it is your pants you are shitting.”
“It’s not like I’d shit someone else’s pants.”
Noah kicked his feet up on a leather ottoman in front of his chair. “I know I’m the newest member of the group and all and I still don’t know much, but I concur with everyone else. I want to see Tony and Anna have to dig deep one last time.”
“Not every book has to have some big, dramatic all is lost moment,” Vlad pouted.
Gavin piped in. “But every book needs a last push to the end that forces a character to have a final epiphany that helps themselves see clearly for the first time.”
Vlad crossed his arms and scowled. “So you’re saying she shouldn’t stay with Tony? She should leave him and go find Jack?”
“She has to go look for Jack,” Malcolm said. “Otherwise, has she really chosen Tony? How will he know that she really chose him?”
“Why the hell does that matter?” And why the hell was he taking it so personally?
“It matters because Jack is the one thing still standing in their way emotionally,” Malcolm said. “He’s everything Tony fears he lacks as a man, and he’s the past that Anna can’t forget. Until they deal with those issues, it’s a cheap way to end the book.”
“Did you read the scene?” Vlad argued. “He just told her he loves her. You guys have been riding my magnificent ass to get Tony to advance the relationship. It’s the one thing he has feared more than anything else. How is that not digging deep?”
“You said that telling her how he felt about her was his greatest fear,” Malcolm said. “But is that really it? Is that what truly scares him?”
“Yes.”
“What if she’d left anyway?”
Vlad scowled as he pondered Malcolm’s question. “What do you mean?”
“What is the worst possible thing that could happen to him at this point?”
“For her to not feel the same way.”
“No,” Colton said, suddenly somber in a way Vlad rarely saw his friend. “For her to love him, too, but to leave him anyway.”
Silence descended over the room. The reverent, damn, that’s some deep shit kind of silence.
“Vlad, does Tony believe that Anna would ever choose him over Jack?” Malcolm asked.
“No,” he breathed.
“Which means she has to go look for Jack,” Mack said. “Otherwise, has she really chosen Tony? How will he know that she really wants him?”
“He has to let her go,” Noah said.
Vlad shook his head. No. That was too mean. He couldn’t do that to Tony.
“More importantly,” Malcolm said, “he has to find the faith that their love is strong enough for her to come back to him.”
Vlad tossed his notebook. “If you guys know my characters so damn well, then you write it.”
Colton tsked and opened a beer. “Sorry, dude. Only you can write the end to your own story.”
“I don’t think this looks right.”
Michelle pulled her tray from one of the large ovens inside the ToeBeans Café kitchen and set it on the cooling counter with a skeptical eye.
Elena peeked over Michelle’s shoulder at the golden-brown pastry cups. “They’re perfect.”
Elena was teaching them how to make korzinochki, a sweet little sour-cream tartlet that had been one of her father’s favorites and would be perfect for the watch party later.
“I don’t think that looks right,” Andrea said, pointing at Alexis’s cat, Beefcake.
Since ToeBeans was a cat café—Alexis hosted cat adoption events on the weekends—Beefcake came to work with her every day to sit in a window box and intimidate customers. He looked like the bad end of a failed science experiment.
“I should get a cat like that,” Claud said, watching from a stool next to the stainless-steel counter inside the kitchen. She declared that morning that she’d be happy to eat the cakes but wanted no part of making them. “I need something to sit in a window box and bare its privates and hiss at men.”
“Isn’t that basically what you do every day?” Elena asked.
Michelle smothered a laugh and turned around, shoulders shaking. Elena looked at Claud, who had a small smile on her face.
“Okay, these can cool while we make the filling,” Elena said.
Alexis gathered all the ingredients—heavy cream, sour cream, and powdered sugar—and measured them into her professional-size mixer. Once the white concoction was the right consistency, they spooned dollops onto the pastries.
“You’re pretty damn good at this, you know,” Alexis said a few minutes later, adding sliced strawberries to each pastry. “Can I lure you to work for me?”
Elena smiled at the praise. “If I could work in America with my visa, I would be a journalist. But I appreciate the offer.”
“So, what are you going to do now that you’ve decided to stay?” That was Andrea. “Can you do any kind of journalism?”
“Only on a volunteer basis maybe. I met with Gretchen Winthrop, and she said she has some ideas for me on how I can help. I think I’d love to tell the stories of refugees and asylum seekers who are stuck in the immigration system.”
“You’d do it for free?” Linda said.
Elena nodded. “The stories matter more than me getting paid for now.”
Claud snorted. “No one is that pure.”
Michelle and Elena looked at each other and spoke in unison. “Vlad is.”
Alexis smiled and hugged herself. “I can’t help but notice your ring.”
Elena blushed.
Andrea sighed. “I miss being in love.”
“What happened to Jeffrey?” Elena asked.
“It fizzled.”
Elena bit her lip. “But, like, he’s alive?”
Andrea sighed. “Alive. Just boring.”
“This means you’re definitely staying, right?” Michelle said, redirecting the conversation to Elena.
“I am. I have some loose ends I need to tie up, but yes. Vlad and I are staying together.”
No one asked her what she meant by loose ends, and she was relieved. She still hadn’t even told Vlad about the loose ends yet.
Alexis hugged her and squeezed. “I am so glad. You two belong together.”
“Should we head over to Colton’s?”
Andrea did a little dance. “I cannot believe I’m going to Colton Wheeler’s house.”
Alexis and Elena carefully boxed up the pastries in pretty pink boxes emblazoned with the logo for ToeBeans and then loaded them into Alexis’s car behind the café. Elena was parked up the block in the public lot. Michelle had driven the Loners in her own car and had already headed out.
As Alexis and Elena walked back into the café, Elena’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out and checked the number on the screen.
Her skin turned to ice.
Vlad curled his phone into his hand as Elena’s number went straight to voice mail again.
“She did not say who was on the phone?” he asked.
Alexis hugged herself and shook her head. She’d arrived at Colton’s fifteen minutes ago and told him Elena had gotten a strange text and quickly left. Now, she wasn’t answering his call.
“It shook her up,” Alexis said. “She tried to act like it didn’t, but I know it did. I hope I’m not being too nosy.” Noah rubbed Alexis’s back.
“No. Thank you for telling me.” Vlad dialed Elena’s number again.
Again, it went straight to voice mail. Something was wrong.
“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, dude,” Mack said. Everyone was gathered in the kitchen, smiling at him with varying degrees of reassurance and concern.
“Can you give me a ride home?” Vlad asked. “I just want to check on her.”
Colton nodded, already digging keys from his pocket. He looked at Mack. “You guys hang out here. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Mack nodded. “Keep us posted.”
Colton drove faster than normal for him, which was saying a lot, because he tackled every road in his life like the cops were on his tail. The SUV was in the driveway when they got there. It was pulled up in front of the door, crooked, as if she’d raced home so quickly that she couldn’t be bothered with the garage.
Colton followed him inside. Vlad called her name from the entryway. When she didn’t respond, Colton said he’d check the backyard while Vlad went upstairs. He called her name again. At the top of the stairs, he heard her voice, muffled and frantic, coming from the guest room. The door was closed.
“Elena?”
He knocked on the door and nearly fell backward when she pulled it open. She immediately returned to pacing, phone pressed to her ear.
“I don’t understand,” she was saying. “Why are you telling me this if you won’t give me the report yourself?”
“Who is it, Elena?”
She gave him a fierce headshake. His eyes took in the rest of the scene. Papers were strewn across the bed—folders and scraps of notes and printouts from websites. He crutched closer. There was no rhyme or reason to the chaos. He picked up a folder, flipped it open, and skimmed the top page. None of it made sense. There were notes in her handwriting of what looked like an interview, but about what, he couldn’t decipher.
“Elena—”
She held up her hand to silence him again. Then into the phone, she said, “Just wait. You can’t drop this on me and then refuse to help. Why the hell did you even call me?” She paused again, and her eyes bugged out. “You know I can’t do that!”
Whoever was on the other line ended the call. Elena folded her phone into her hand and began to shake.
“Elena, what the hell is going on? What is all this? Who was that?”
Elena sank onto the mattress. Her pupils were dilated like someone high on Adderall or adrenaline. Her hands shook. Her knees bounced. And when she finally looked up at him, her gaze scared the shit out of him.
Colton’s voice called up the stairs then. “Hey, I’m coming up. Is everything okay up here?”
Vlad swiveled on his crutches and hobbled back to the hallway just as Colton appeared at the top of the stairs. “I found her.”
“Everything okay?”
He had no idea. “I will be down soon.”
Colton looked unconvinced but turned around and headed back down the stairs. Vlad returned to the guest room to now find Elena standing and frantically sorting through the mess on the bed. Frustrated with his inability to move, Vlad tossed his crutches and tested the weight on his foot. He hobbled to her. “Elena, you have to talk to me. What is all this?”
“I have to go back.”
“Go back where? Chicago?”
Her hands stalled. “No.”
His stomach plummeted. “Russia?”
“Just for a few days,” she whispered, voice shaking. “Maybe a week.”
“Why?”
She turned to face him, a mixture of regret and entreaty tightening her features. “I should have told you about this. I was going to, but there hasn’t been time, and—”
“Told me about what?” Jesus, it was like they were having two different conversations. He asked her what color the sky was, and she gave him the recipe for borscht.
“This,” she said, gesturing toward the mess on the bed. “What I’ve been working on.”
Vlad gripped her shoulders. “Look at me,” he said, trying to calm his voice. “Just start at the beginning.”
Elena sucked in a breath and let it out. “Okay. But you have to promise not to freak out.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I’ve been trying to finish my father’s story.”
He freaked out. His knees grew weak, so he sank to the edge of the bed and tried to keep up as words spilled from her mouth, but they were gibberish, meaningless. Or maybe it was just his brain refusing to listen, to process.
“Elena.” He coughed to clear the sand from his throat. “I don’t understand. How long have you been working on this?”
“A while.”
“How long?”
“Since I’ve been in Chicago.”
He freaked out a second time. “Are you kidding me?”
“It took me a long time to start to piece everything together, but I’ve finally started to make progress, Vlad. Real progress.”
He stood, carefully, the ginger movement incongruous to the steel in his voice. “This is too dangerous. You have to stop.”
“No. I’ve been careful. I use untraceable email addresses and burner phones. I—”
“Burner phones?” His eyes nearly fell out of their sockets. “Do you hear yourself?”
“Yes. I sound like a journalist. That’s what I am.”
He raked his hands over his hair.
“Look,” she said, picking up something from the bed. “Look at this.”
He was doing his best to keep an open mind, but the further he stretched it, the more terrifying possibilities poured in. “What am I looking at?”
“A report from the witness who said they saw my father get on the train that night. But the witness lied. He was nowhere near the train station that night.”
“How do you know?”
She hesitated. “My source.”
“The person on the phone just now?”
“Yes.” She put the paper back and resumed gathering everything into an organized stack.
“Who is he?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Jesus, Elena. This isn’t a game.” He regretted the words and his tone this time, so he tried again. “How does this source know the truth?”
“Because he has seen the original witness report, the one he gave before it was changed. I need that report, Vlad.”
“And you have to go to Russia to get it.”
“He has a copy. But it’s too risky to email or fax. I have to get it in person.”
He swore under his breath. “And what then? What happens after you get that report?”
“And then . . .” She shook her head, grabbed the entire stack of notes, and shoved them in her backpack. “And then I don’t know.”
She started to walk away, so he gripped her arms to stop her. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this, Elena?”
She unartfully dodged his question. “I’ll only be gone a few days. Maybe, maybe a week. I can get a flight to New York in a few hours and then to Russia from there tomorrow night.”
“No.” He shook his head, his jaw a wedge of granite. “You can’t go.”
She looked at him with beseeching eyes. “I need to follow this lead.”
“What lead?” he exploded. “Your father is dead, and nothing is going to change that.”
“I know that,” she yelled, yanking free of his hands. “But I have to know what happened to him, Vlad. I’m trying to find out what happened to him.”
“No, you’re not! You’re trying to justify in your mind why his job was always more important than you!”
Her face fell as the color drained from her skin. “His job was important. Journalism is important.”
“Is that how you justify the fact that you hid in a hotel room for three days with almost nothing to eat? Why my mother had to buy you your first tampons? Why he never, ever remembered your birthday?”
She wrapped her arms around her torso and looked as small and defeated as she did the day that he snapped at her in the hospital. He wished he could take it away—the pain of what he said—but he couldn’t. She had to face it, because the guys were right. It was just like in fiction. This was her internal conflict, and until she truly faced it, they would always end up right back here.
Vlad bent to grab his crutches. He was tired and sore and all out of fight. He slid them under his armpits and leaned heavily.
“What are you doing?” she breathed.
Irony turned his voice to vinegar. “What I always do with you. I’m letting a captive bird go winging.”
“Vlad . . .” Her voice was a hoarse, wrenching rasp that would’ve made any Russian romanticist proud, as if it had floated up from the depths of some hidden well of feelings where she’d been hiding them. He recognized the sound because he had one of those wells too. The difference was, he wasn’t afraid of the dark water below. She was still searching for a life preserver.
Vlad closed the distance between them and cradled her head against his chest. “I love you, Elena. I don’t want you to go, but I’m not going to stop you, and I’m not going to make you choose. But I’m done trying to convince you to choose me.”
Elena straightened and pulled away from him. “Why can’t you just support me on this? Why can’t you accept that this is who I am?”
“Because you’re chasing something you’ll never be able to catch. And I can’t compete with a ghost.”
“I’m not asking you to compete with my father.”
“He’s not the ghost I’m talking about. Decide what you want, Elena. Once and for all.”
The trek down the stairs was the longest of his life. Colton was crouched on the bottom step, waiting for him. He stood up when he heard Vlad’s descent.
“Let’s go,” Vlad said.
“Um, where’s Elena?”
Vlad crutched around him to the door. “She’s not coming.”
“Is she okay?”
Vlad didn’t answer. He threw open the door and crutched outside. Colton followed slowly. “Dude, talk to me. What the fuck is going on?”
Vlad spoke purely out of pain. “I need to make a stop.”
“Thought we were never coming back here,” Colton said, car idling in the seedy, weedy parking lot.
“You can wait in the car.” Vlad got out with his crutches. He banged on the door with his fist, and when the window slid open, he held up his coin. A moment of palpable surprise from the eyes staring out at him made him scowl. “Let me in.”
Colton appeared beside him as the door squeaked open. Byron ushered them inside, a leery look on his scraggly face. “He’s not going to like this. He said you’re banned.”
“I don’t give a shit what he said.”
Byron made a quick decision about the difference in their two sizes and told them to go inside. Colton was blessedly silent as he followed Vlad up the ramp and through the heavy curtain. When they walked inside, Roman didn’t even look up from where he arranged a delicate array of cheese curls. “Didn’t think you’d have the balls to show up here again.”
“I need a hit.”
Roman snorted.
“Ädelost,” Vlad said, pointing at the blue-veiny Swiss cheese. He scanned the day’s selection and landed on a semihard from Denmark. “Samsø. And . . . Époisses.”
Colton and Roman both reeled back. The creamy French cheese was known for its pungency. Only the most hard-core of cheese connoisseurs could stand its aroma.
“Dude, no,” Colton said.
“That is strong cheese, my friend,” Roman said.
“The stronger the better.” Vlad pulled his wallet from his back pocket.
“A man only drowns himself in cheese like that when he’s looking for a fight,” Roman said.
Colton lifted an eyebrow. “Or when he’s just been in one.”
Vlad lifted his chin to the end of the table. “Throw some of that Edammer in there too.” Because why the fuck not? He was going to drown his sorrows in the decadent nutty flavor alongside some chilled peaches until he passed out. And then maybe he could wake up and realize it had all been a dream, and she was not going back to Russia.
Roman tossed him the bag, and Vlad dropped two hundred dollars on the table.
“Tell your wife I said hello.”
Vlad growled, and Colton dragged him away. “What the hell is going on?” he asked, helping Vlad into the car. He threw the crutches in the back and jogged around to the driver’s side. “I mean it, Vlad. You either tell me what’s going on or—”
Vlad ripped open the bag. The pungent, offensive odor of the Époisses immediately filled the cab of Colton’s truck. Colton gagged and opened a window. “Christ. That smells like athlete’s foot.”
Vlad tore off a hunk of the Samsø, set it on his tongue, and rolled it around in his mouth. “It’s an acquired taste.”
“Caviar is an acquired taste. That is the end stages of gangrene.” Colton gagged again as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Start talking.”
“She’s going back to Russia to find her father.”
“Elena?”
“Yes, of course Elena.”
“What the fuck? Why now?”
Vlad relayed the key details of what Elena had told him.
“And you’re not going to stop her?”
“What’s the point? She was always going to leave me.”
“If you still think that after all this time, then you haven’t learned a goddamn thing. Have you been paying attention at all?”
Colton made a call on his hands-free calling device.
Mack answered immediately. “What’s the story? Is everything okay?”
“No,” Colton said, glaring pointedly at Vlad. “Assemble the bros. We have a magnificent ass to kick.”
The minute they pulled back into the driveway at Colton’s, Claud and Michelle met them on the front porch.
“What did you do?” Claud demanded.
“Vlad, what is going on?” Michelle, at least, used a nice tone of voice.
“I like that girl,” Claud said, following Vlad inside. “If you hurt her, you will answer to me.”
The guys dragged him to the basement. The yelling commenced as soon as Vlad explained himself.
“So . . . you gave her an ultimatum?” Malcolm looked ready to tackle him.
“No! I told her specifically that I was not going to make her choose.”
“Which is an ultimatum to a woman who thinks she doesn’t have a choice,” Mack argued.
Vlad felt a kick inside his chest.
“Oh, is that a light bulb going off?” Mack snorted.
Malcolm sat down next to him and settled a hand on Vlad’s knee. “You’re the heart and soul of this friendship. But sometimes the most tender people can be the most stubborn, because they have the most to lose when things go wrong.”
“She is the stubborn one.”
The guys all exchanged a get a load of this douchebag look. “Vlad, why do you think she never told you about any of this before?”
The question was from Noah, who had mostly refrained from yelling until now.
“Your lack of answer tells me you know what it is,” Noah said.
“She said she knew I would freak out.”
“And you did, didn’t you?” Malcolm prodded.
“I told her I love her. I told her—”
“That your love comes with strings attached when she needs you most.” Noah’s tone of voice managed to shame Vlad as much as the words themselves.
Malcolm was there again, this time with an arm around his shoulders. “There’s a big difference between letting someone go because you have faith that they’ll come back to you and letting someone go because deep down you’re convinced they won’t. One is an act of love, the other an act of fear.”
I let a captive bird go winging . . .
He’d spent six years clinging to his mother’s interpretation of the poem, that Elena was a frightened bird who needed to fly free for a while before returning to the nest. But didn’t that mean their marriage was, and had always been, a cage from which Elena had to be set free? Didn’t that trap him in the role of the beast holding her against her will until he chose to open the door to the cage?
All his time in book club, all the lessons he thought he’d learned, and he never learned the most important. He wasn’t the cage. He wasn’t the captivity to which she had to eventually return.
He was the air beneath her wings. She needed him to fly with her.
“I need to go home,” he rasped.
Colton dug his keys out again. “Yes, you do. You have a lot of groveling to do.”
Colton drove as fast as he could, but it was too late.
Elena was already gone.