All the Lies We Tell (Quarry Road #1)(7)
“No, thanks. I try to stay away from sugar.”
Alicia burst into laughter, and the warmth of it hit him in the hollow of his throat and someplace lower, between his ribs. “God, Nikolai. What the hell? Don’t tell me you’ve turned into some kind of . . . I don’t know. Health nut?”
“I wouldn’t say that. Just that when I’m traveling, it’s too easy to fill up on junk food, and you get to craving it. Then a lot of times when I’m out in places where you can’t find it . . . I didn’t want to miss it, that’s all. Easier to just give it up.” He gave her a small smile.
There’d been a lot of things like that in his life. Better to abandon than risk longing for them. He shrugged.
Her laughter faded, her eyes still glistening with tears. “Easier to give up something so you don’t have to miss it? That’s pretty deep.”
He hadn’t meant it to be, but he supposed it was, if you wanted to analyze it. He didn’t. He spent a lot of time trying to do the opposite of that sort of navel-gazing. It never did much good.
“Ilya never mentioned she was sick,” he said, to turn the conversation. “If I’d known . . .”
He trailed off, not sure what he’d meant to say. If he’d known—what? He wouldn’t have come home any sooner. He didn’t plan to stay long, either.
Alicia shook her head and bit into the soft cake. She chewed solemnly, then tossed it into the nearby garbage can with a grimace. “Gross. Stuff like that always looks so good until you get it, but it’s never as good as it looks.”
“Talk about being pretty deep,” Nikolai said.
She didn’t answer, and he regarded her a moment. Sad eyes. Curved-down mouth. The last time he’d seen her had been a few months after she and Ilya divorced. Niko had run into her at the grocery store while on a brief visit home. Their exchange had been downright arctic. He hadn’t been home for more than a day or two since then, and he hadn’t seen her on any of those visits, not for years.
It might as well have been seconds; that’s how different he felt when he looked at her.
“Sorry,” Niko said quietly. “Trying to lighten the mood.”
Allie’s frown didn’t smooth. “She wasn’t sick for long. I try to see her at least once a week, and last week she was still doing great. Up and about, moving around. She’d complained about being tired, but she’s ninety-three. That’s to be expected. The staff said she took a downturn early Tuesday morning.”
The call hadn’t been a surprise, and he was grateful it hadn’t been someone telling him his grandmother had passed. He’d had time to see her again; at least there was that. He’d applied for leave from the kibbutz board and had been approved at once. Booking the flight to Newark International, making the trip, and figuring out a way to get from New Jersey to Quarrytown had been a little more complicated. He’d arrived exhausted and jet-lagged. He still hadn’t slept. He was sure he wouldn’t for another few hours.
“I got here as soon as I could,” Niko said, although she hadn’t said a word about how long it had taken him.
“I didn’t know they had your number. But it’s good they did,” Allie said with a pause that told him she knew as well as he did that she wouldn’t have called him. “It’s good for you to be here. Ilya’s happy about it, I’m sure.”
Niko noticed very particularly that she hadn’t said she was happy he was there. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
He nodded. “Yeah. Me, too.”
“I don’t want to go back in there,” she blurted, like a confession. She lifted her chin, meeting his gaze steadfastly. “I know I should, but I just . . . I can’t. I don’t want to see her like that. And I really don’t want to hold Ilya’s hand through this.”
The last had been spoken with an undertone of biting venom that surprised him. He knew his brother’s faults as well as she did, although maybe no longer better. She’d been married to the guy, after all, while Niko had left home at age eighteen and had spent very little time there since.
“He hasn’t been here to see her in a couple months,” Alicia continued, her voice low and bitter. “She asked about him all the time, but he was always too busy to show up. He had a million excuses, when the truth was he just didn’t want to see her failing. Now he’s in there moaning and mourning. He’s going to let everything else fall to the side while he does this, Nikolai. I know him. He’s going to focus entirely on himself, and I’m going to pick up the slack, and . . . I don’t want to do it anymore.”
She cut herself off, her lips pressed together. She shrugged, shaking her head as though words had failed her. Then she tossed the soda bottle into the trash and crossed her arms over her belly, hands cupping the opposite elbows. She scuffed her shoe on the tile floor.
“He can be kind of a dick,” Niko agreed.
Alicia tilted her head to give him a sideways glance. “Yeah. Sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything about it. It’s not your problem.”
“It’s not like we don’t all know it. Hell, Ilya would probably say the same thing about himself. I’m sorry he hasn’t been better to you, Allie. You deserve better. You always have.” Niko didn’t mean to pull her close again, but there she was in his arms.