There are moments in life when you stand at a major crossroads. Two paths diverge, and you can choose but one.
Veronica Ballard’s moment came in the grand high-ceilinged lobby of Moscow’s Kudrinskaya Building as a winter afternoon’s darkness fell across the land. If she went with Nicholas, she would miss her night flight to Italy. She would have to persuade Rinaldo that even though she was once again pissing all over his production, he should allow her to go on stage as his Leonora after a scant few hours of rehearsal, her first performance the all-important preview.
If she did not go with Nicholas, she would pass up the only chance she would ever have to learn the truth about her birth mother. At long last, Nicholas assured her, her questions would be answered. This neighbor was her birth mother’s closest friend. She had lived near her for decades. She had watched Veronica’s siblings grow up. She had details about Veronica’s mother that Nicholas knew Veronica would want to hear.
To her dying day, Veronica could not know which path she would have chosen if she did not have the ring on her finger. It was hardly lost on her that the ring had pulled a disappearing act that succeeded brilliantly in drawing her back to the Kudrinskaya Building at the very moment Nicholas arrived there with news of this neighbor. The ring was practically shaking her by the shoulders and screaming in her ear.
Know thy heart, it implored.
She supposed there had been a time when she had doubted the ring. But that time had surely passed. “Where’s your car?” she asked Nicholas.
Minutes later, once more on the highway she was getting to know so well, Veronica listened to Nicholas relay how he had ferreted out this neighbor by knocking on the other doors of the corridor where Veronica’s mother had lived. “The neighbor’s name is Anya. She and your mother were friends for years.”
“ ‘Were.’ ” Veronica looked out the window as Moscow receded in the distance. “So I was right that my birth mother is dead.”
Nicholas spoke softly. “Anya said she died a few months ago.” He was speeding down the highway but lay a soft touch on Veronica’s leg. “Let her tell you.”
What Nicholas knew but did not reveal at that moment was that Anya wanted to do more than tell Veronica. She wanted to show her.
He drove to the outskirts of the city where Veronica’s birth mother had lived, to a spot where urban life gave way to a pine forest. On a narrow curving road, he slid the Renault behind a parked car and cut the engine.
“What are we doing here?” Veronica wanted to know.
Nicholas gestured to the forest, midnight dark, though it was early evening. Veronica saw a small light bobbing in the distance. “This is where Anya wanted to meet you. That’s her out there, with a lantern.”
“What’s she doing in the middle of a—” Veronica began to ask until she looked more closely and realized this wasn’t merely a pine forest.
It was a cemetery.
“Russians sometimes set graves among the trees,” Nicholas murmured. “They don’t always clear the land.”
Veronica saw that now. Low spindly iron fences demarcated family plots, with headstones at one end shaped like the crosses she had seen in her mind’s eye, with an additional low bar that tilted down from right to left.
Russian Orthodox crosses, just like she had seen in her dream.
Veronica’s heart hammered in her chest. The scene wasn’t precisely the same, but still it seemed as if her dream were about to play out before her eyes. “My mother is buried here,” she whispered.
She got out of the Renault and headed toward the lantern.
Anya did not move as Veronica approached her across the uneven snow-covered ground, keenly aware that Anya was standing beside her mother’s grave. As in her dream, her ears caught the tinkling of a wind chime. This time, though, she was not in a hurry and she was not alone. Anya came forward a few steps, set her lantern on the snow, held out her gloved hands, and uttered a small cry.
The two women pitched together in a hug. Anya, a thin woman in a bulky coat, kept repeating something through her tears. Veronica couldn’t speak for her own sobs. Anya, who was not her blood, cried and rocked and cradled Veronica the way she had longed all her life to be held by her birth mother. She knew now she would never feel that incomparable embrace. But Anya, who clearly had loved Veronica’s mother, was giving her solace in her mother’s stead.
At last they pulled apart. Nicholas spoke from behind Veronica. “Anya is saying you are very beautiful, Veronica. Your mother would be so proud.”
Veronica didn’t want to let go of Anya’s hands. “You were friends for a long time?”
“She was my best friend all of my life,” Nicholas translated, now holding the lantern and casting a circle of light around their huddled trio. “I miss her every day.”
Pulling Veronica by the hand, Anya led her toward a headstone. It looked like every other, but yet there was none other like it, for her birth mother lay beneath.
“Rada Grigorevna Kozlovskaya.” Anya pointed in turn to the names inscribed on a silver medallion in the center of the cross.
So many times Veronica had rolled the syllables of that name on her tongue. “She died in September?”
“She had a heart attack,” Nicholas translated.
Veronica stared at the date of her mother’s death. September 28th. What had she been doing that day? How could she have lived through that entire day with no idea that something so monumental had occurred?
Anya squeezed Veronica’s hand and spoke again. “She never stopped thinking about you,” Nicholas said. “She loved you all her life.”
“Why didn’t she respond to any of my letters?”
“She didn’t want you to feel any pull back here,” Nicholas translated. “She said life could be cruel in Russia, and she didn’t want you dragged into that.”
Anya kept speaking. “Your mother felt terrible guilt about taking you to the orphanage,” Nicholas went on. “So much so that she went back a few months later. But you were already gone. Your mother was told you’d been adopted by a couple from California.”
Why had Masha not mentioned this? Maybe she felt guilty that she had not been able to reunite Veronica with her birth mother. Though she shouldn’t. If the chance came for a baby in her care to be adopted, Masha was right to grab it with both hands.
“Years later,” Nicholas went on, “your mother started receiving your letters from California so she knew what she had been told was true. She also knew you had a good life, which is what she wanted for you above everything else.”
“Do I have brothers and sisters?” Veronica asked.
“Two brothers and a sister”—he hesitated—“who survived.”
Anya tugged Veronica toward the headstone that rose from the earth beside her mother’s. “That is your brother buried there,” Nicholas said.
“One of my brothers died?” Veronica peered at the headstone. Her poor brother: She could see in the lantern’s glow that he had lived only ten years.
“Cancer,” Nicholas reported. “Which was why it was impossible for your mother to take care of you. She was overwhelmed taking care of such a sick child while raising three others.”
Anya added something else. “Anya believes it was losing two of her children, your brother and you, that weakened your mother’s health. Her death was sudden, but on some level it wasn’t a surprise.”
What a huge load she had carried. And, given what Veronica knew from her adoption papers, with virtually no help from her children’s father.
“He is dead as well,” Nicholas reported. “Your mother loved him, but she couldn’t count on him. Your mother was a dreamer,” he went on as Anya spoke. “She trusted people she shouldn’t. Including her younger sister, who came to live with her in the last few years. She knew what you’d written in your letters and apparently saw an opportunity after your mother died to profit from your success.”
“Did my mother ever play the CD I sent her? Did she like my singing?”
Anya cried something out as she threw back her head and clapped her hands. Nicholas laughed. “Your mother loved it, Veronica. She listened to it all the time. In fact she played it so loud she drove the neighbors crazy, even Anya sometimes.”
Then Anya again grew serious. She grasped Veronica’s hands before gesturing behind her toward her mother’s grave.
“Veronica, your CD is buried with your mother,” Nicholas murmured. “Her children knew she would want something of each of them with her for all time.” His voice cracked and tears ran down Anya’s cheeks. “Anya says it makes her very happy to think that your mother is hearing your voice in heaven.”
Veronica couldn’t keep her control after that. What a gift dear Anya had given her. The next time she sang, and every time thereafter, she would imagine her birth mother hearing her and smiling, her pain extinguished at last.
In the cold, in the dark, with Anya’s story told, they didn’t linger. Veronica touched her birth mother’s headstone, and her brother’s, and slowly walked with Nicholas and Anya over the snow-covered earth back to their cars.
“Anya understands you have to get back to Italy,” Nicholas told her, exchanging what looked like a conspiratorial glance with the older woman as he helped her into her car. “But she wants to have a party for you the next time you’re in Moscow. You could meet your siblings and Anya’s husband and children as well.”
“That would be incredible,” Veronica told Anya. “I would love to see you again, and to meet your family.” The prospect of returning to Russia felt very different now. To meet her brothers and sister Veronica would fly back in a heartbeat. And next time she could sing for the children at the orphanage, too.
Veronica and Nicholas bid Anya goodbye. Back in the Renault, he turned the ignition and raised the heat. “How do you feel?”
“Worlds better.” She felt a warmth deep inside, even in the frigid car. “Anya has a heart of gold and that makes me believe my birth mother did, too. You can tell a lot about a person from their friends.”
“I agree.”
“And what she told me about my mother, and my brother, too, it explains things. I understand now why she gave me up. She had such a hard life, Nicholas. I just wish she would’ve let me do something to help her.”
“It sounds to me like you did. From what Anya said, your singing gave her a lot of joy.”
“Now I have to get used to the idea that she’s gone.”
They sat for a moment before Veronica spoke again. “You made all this happen, Nicholas. I don’t know how to thank you. If you hadn’t—”
He reached across the gearshift and took her hand. “That’s the last time you’re allowed to mention it, Veronica.”
“But I—”
“Did you ever think I might have an ulterior motive?”
That silenced her. She gazed into his dark eyes. Outside in the endless night the wind gusted, rattling the car. Inside with Nicholas she felt warm and safe.
“I just want to be with you, Veronica,” he said softly. “It’s that simple. I don’t know how to explain it but whatever you’ve got I’m buying.”
This time the diva was lost for words. Nicholas released her hand to brush her cheek.
“So if you really want to thank me,” he went on in that same spellbinding tone, “you can tell me tonight isn’t goodbye.”
She found her voice. “I don’t want it to be goodbye but”—she shook her head—“we only met yesterday. How can you feel that way about me so fast?”
“Oh, I don’t know that it’s so mysterious.” He looked away. “Maybe I’ve been around the block a few times, and so I know a gem when I see one. Maybe I have friends who give me grief for spending so much time at the orphanage and I want to tell them my dating plan only needed time to work.” He gave her another of his dazzling smiles. “Because look what showed up on the doorstep.”
She had to smile back. It wasn’t accidental that she’d shown up, either. She’d been propelled there, by her destiny, by the ring, by an otherworldly mix of the two. “It’s been an intense couple of days,” she allowed.
“You’re telling me. I know more about you than some women I’ve dated for months. And what I see I like, Veronica.” Again his voice dropped. She sank into its lower register like a baby into warm bath water. “I like how soft your heart is, and how passionate you are, and how much you want to trust. But you’ve got a backbone, too. I also get where you come from, and I suspect it makes you look at the world the same way I do.” Again his hand reached up to caress her cheek. “Last but not least, you’re stunningly beautiful. And even though I haven’t heard any evidence yet I hear tell you’re a fantastic opera singer.”
“I’m not bad,” she murmured.
They stared into each other’s eyes. Snowflakes gathered on the windshield as if trying to buffer them from all the madness of the world outside. Veronica held still as she watched Nicholas’s eyes drop to her lips. A moment later he leaned close, and his mouth found hers.
He left her breathless, as somewhere deep in her heart she had known he would. He pulled back the tiniest bit, but even that was too much. “Indulge your romantic side, Veronica,” he whispered. “Be my Leonora.”
“You remember what role I’m singing?”
“I remember everything you ever told me.”
They kissed again. Veronica knew what she wanted to do to him, what she wanted him to do to her. Imagining all that wonder left her mouth dry and her knees weak.
“We should go back to my apartment,” he murmured a moment later.
“Yes.”
“I wish it weren’t an hour away. But maybe while I drive you can sort out your flight.”
“Yes.” There were practical matters to attend to. One was to call Rinaldo. Maybe it would be easier to do that in a lust-induced haze. She was petrified what his reaction would be to her missing yet another day of rehearsals, the last full one.
Nicholas made good time back to Moscow. Veronica had seen him dodge traffic before, but tonight he seemed particularly adept. In the end she couldn’t reach Rinaldo so she left a detailed voicemail. And she opted for the second departure of the morning, as she would miss rehearsals anyway and the first flight would require her to appear at the airport at the ungodly hour of five a.m. She had the idea she would have better things to do at that time than check in her baggage.
At one point as the Renault cut a swath through Moscow, Veronica remembered the ring. It felt very natural on her finger now, its gemstone a spectacle of glimmering green and white. Though she left it unchanged, for the first time she felt an urge to turn it around so that the heart would face inward, not the crown. She knew from what she’d read before that would signal that her heart had found its mate.
Her impressions of Nicholas’s apartment, hastily gained, were favorable. It was on a quiet tree-lined street and backed onto a park. Small and charming, it had hardwood floors and clean white walls and pocket doors that hearkened back to an earlier era.
He poured them glasses of red wine, which they tasted between kisses. “I suppose I should feed you,” he said.
She had breath enough for only one word. “Eventually.”
***
Sometime in the delicious night, Veronica awoke. She lay still and listened to Nicholas’s steady breathing. She reveled in his naked warmth beside her, and her lips curved in a knowing lover’s smile. In the air hung a faint aroma of the eggs they’d scrambled when hunger of a different sort had driven them from his bed. They’d downed the meal with the red wine and yesterday’s bread that did the job when it was toasted.
In the distance a siren wailed. A tree branch tickled the windowpane, making Veronica think the wind was still tumbling the snowflakes in a wintry dance.
Very carefully, so as not to wake Nicholas, she got out of bed. It had occurred to her she should charge her phone. She would need it in the morning.
In the living room, with its accent wall of striped wallpaper and bookshelves stocked with tomes in English, Russian, and French, she was attaching cord to phone when she noticed she’d received a voicemail hours earlier. She had been fully occupied, it was safe to say, and so had missed it. It was from Rinaldo.
Her heart thumped when she heard the message the first time. She had to play it a few more times because Rinaldo was so upset he lapsed into Italian occasionally and those parts were hard to understand. Though in truth she didn’t need to grasp the words to ascertain their meaning.
This was too much. She had gone too far. What did she take him for? How little did she value his opera? Carina would be his Leonora, on Friday for the preview and on every other night. Veronica needn’t bother herself to return to Florence from Moscow on Rinaldo’s account. He was done with her. Finito.
The readout of the hour glowed ghostly white on her cell phone. If Veronica rushed, she could still make the earlier flight. The faster she got to Rinaldo, the more likely it was that she could change his mind. Her persuasive powers had never been stronger, she was sure of it. Especially armed as she was with the ring.
She threw her phone and its cord into her handbag and abandoned all efforts to be quiet. She raced around Nicholas’s apartment grabbing articles of her clothing from all the places they’d been flung. She took special care to return the ring to her finger, knowing as she did its odd propensities when it came to international travel.
She was almost dressed when Nicholas appeared in the living room. He sported a robe and a dazed expression. “What in the world are you doing?”
“I have to catch the early flight. I got a call from Rinaldo. He”—she didn’t want to say it out loud for fear that would set it in stone—“said he needs me back ASAP. I’ll call you.”
She tried to kiss him on the mouth but he moved his head slightly so her lips grazed his cheek instead. “I’m sorry, Nicholas. Please understand.”
He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Veronica was unnerved to see a flash of the disillusionment he’d displayed in her aunt’s apartment, when she’d asked the evil pair how they’d like her to pay for the so-called special treatment and Nicholas had assumed she’d fallen for their treachery. Now he started to speak. “Then at least let me—”
“I can’t wait. I’ve got to go now. I’ll take the metro.”
She was out the door without looking back.