Beyond the Shadow of Night(47)

“I remember him saying that. You didn’t disagree, as I recall.”

“It was the official line, I guess. And I liked to fool myself. It made me feel better that way.”

“And the truth?”

“When he called me at Mother’s place he would ask how I was and how school was. Later on, there was stuff that made me feel terrible. He’d say how he hadn’t seen anyone outside work for two weeks, that he was fine with his own company. He’d really lay it on thick—just for my benefit. Sometimes, when he visited and had to leave, he got upset and was almost in tears. I don’t know whether they were tears of sadness, anger, or deceit. All I know is that it worked.”

“That’s when you went back?”

“Yes. And after that I guess I found it hard to escape.”

“What did your mother have to say about that?”

“I think she was still just a little in love with him, or at least didn’t want him to be lonely and unhappy. You’ve met her. She’s the gregarious type, always was. But he was the opposite; he didn’t much care for other people.”

“That’s a harsh thing to say about your father.”

Diane shrugged. “It’s the truth—or my version of it. You weren’t there when I brought boyfriends home and he would almost interrogate them and then tell me what was wrong with them. I challenged him about it when I turned twenty. He would tell me he was only being a proud father and trying to protect me. I would say I didn’t believe him, and then he’d get all tearful, telling me his only sin was he could never accept that any man was good enough for me. I swallowed that, and I was almost thirty when I realized it was kind of an act of his. He just found it hard to contemplate me moving out.”

“I don’t get it, Diane. I know you’re not quite as confident as you come across. But if that dawned on you when you were thirty, why didn’t you make the break then, get your own place not too far away, ease yourself away from him?”

“I guess after all that time together I got as weak as him. And he was my father. I know he was possessive of me, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t love me.”

“Doesn’t it?”

They both relaxed in silence. Diane sensed Brad’s head lift up. She knew what he was doing: checking the time on the alarm clock.

“No, it doesn’t,” Diane said. “For instance, there was the time I mentioned to him that I wanted to socialize more—to meet more people. He said it was a coincidence, because he was thinking exactly the same thing. So we held a few house parties, invited a few people from his workplace, a few from mine, some neighbors. Somehow I knew his heart wasn’t in it, but he persevered. After they’d gone he would bitch about them, and during the third one he started being rude to people. Not aggressive or anything, just bad-tempered. I asked him what the big deal was, especially when he’d said he wanted the parties just as much as I did. He had a face like thunder, and I knew then that he’d never really wanted the parties. It had all been a way to please me, to make me happy living there. So even though his motives were selfish, he tried to make me happy.”

“You don’t think he was holding you back for his own purposes?”

“Mmm . . . I guess we all act in our own interests more than we care to admit. We all have a weaker self.”

“You don’t think he had some sort of hold on you?”

“Of course not. Well, look, I just didn’t want him to be lonely. Is that so wrong?”

Brad opened his mouth to reply but seemed to downgrade it to a nod.

“We had our ups and downs but we got on fine together. I miss him. I really miss him. We had the same tastes in food and TV—at least, so he led me to believe. And that made it even harder for me to move out.”

“Is that it? Was that the reason for all those years? You just didn’t want him to be lonely?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Not now.”

“Okay, but talking of moving out, have you seen the time? We need breakfast, then we have to call in to find out if your video shoot is on.”

Diane turned to him. They embraced. She thanked him.





Chapter 16

Kiev, Ukraine, 1942

Mykhail knew from the passing of the seasons that he’d now been in the POW camp for about a year. A sea of men stretched over the horizon. Starvation and disease were everywhere, beatings and shootings commonplace. Just as food, shelter, and clothing were rare.

For Mykhail, eating was only out of animalistic habit. When the food arrived at the gates he would fight his way to the front, knocking over people who he knew he should have thought of as comrades or compatriots—or fellow human beings, at the very least. But he fought them for what little food was provided.

There was plenty of time to think, and so many of his papa’s words kept spinning in his head—talk of being a proud Ukrainian, talk of self-preservation, doing what was necessary to survive. After all, those ideals had gotten him so far while Borys and Taras and millions of others had perished.

But even with those memories of his papa’s words rattling around in his head, Mykhail’s spirit, if not his conscious self, was starting to give up. How much longer could he survive? Another year? Another five years? And what after that—a country controlled by Nazis rather than Soviets? He’d seen many prisoners attack guards for the finality of being shot, choosing to be put down like sick and useless farmyard animals.