The Guest Room(89)

But my mother did. See what I mean? She was amazing lady.

…

Of course, my mother would die when she was young, too. Not as young as my dad, but young. She was forty-five years old. I was, as I told you, fifteen.

“And it was right after your mother died,” Richard said to me, “that Vasily kidnapped you?” He sounded so sad.

“Few weeks, yes.”

It was that moment that we both heard the car doors slamming outside his house. We’d never heard the car pull into his driveway. It was maybe four-thirty in the afternoon. We looked toward the hallway and then down at the kitchen table, and at the Makarov that was still right beside the ashtray with my big mess of cigarette butts and ashes.





Chapter Fourteen


Alexandra grabbed the Makarov, swiping it off the tabletop with the speed of a feral cat—claws extended—snatching a barn mouse from the hay. It hadn’t crossed Richard’s mind to reach for it, not when she’d first dropped it on the kitchen table and not when they heard the car door in his driveway. Together they stood, but he motioned for her to wait where she was.

“It’s just my family,” he told her.

“How do you know?”

“It couldn’t be anyone else,” he said, hoping this would reassure her (though the realization did not give him particular comfort). But he was already anticipating how he would introduce Alexandra to Kristin and Melissa, aware that whatever he said would have to be perfect. He would have one, brief chance to explain to his wife that this young woman was perhaps the person she was likely to hate most in the world, but for better or worse the role of paladin had fallen to him—and now he had to help her. They had to help her. Together they had to convince Alexandra that the police were not going to put her in chains in some Bedlam-like dungeon. The reality was it was time. It was time to call the police. And it was time to call the police because they were the girl’s only chance—regardless of whether she’d killed the second Russian.

He took a breath and opened the front door, and there indeed were his wife and his daughter, the two of them about to ascend the steps. He went outside onto the stoop and shut the door behind him.

“Hey, Dad,” said Melissa.

“Hey, sweetie,” he said back. He could see in his wife’s eyes that already she was on full alert because he had closed the front door.

“What’s going on?” Kristin asked him.

“She’s here. The girl from the party. She needs our help.”

His wife started to shake her head, and Richard honestly wasn’t sure whether she meant they could not—they would not—help her, or she was simply incredulous. He reached out for her arm, and he took it as a good sign that she didn’t slap his hand away.

“I am…dumbstruck,” she said simply.

“The girl from the party?” Melissa repeated. “The sex slave?”

“She’s just a girl, Kris,” he said, not precisely ignoring his daughter, but knowing that he had to address his wife’s issues first. “Whatever happened, it’s my fault. It was always and only my fault. But—”

“Why haven’t you called the police?”

“She has a gun,” he answered, and with that short statement instantly all that he wanted to say—all those possibly perfect words—were gone, wafting away from him like dandelion seeds on a spring breeze.

Kristin pushed him away and took Melissa by the hand. “Are you crazy?” she said to him. She started dragging Melissa back to the car. “A gun in our house? We’re leaving right now. I’ll call the police when we’re out of here. Come on, Melissa.”

“Please don’t. Don’t go. Don’t call the police.”

“I’m not endangering our child. We’re going!”

“She’s no danger to us.”

“She has a gun!”

“She’s a danger to herself. That’s all. That’s my fear. I’m afraid she’s going to get herself killed.”

“Richard, you’ve lost your mind,” she said, and it seemed as if she might have been about to say more. But she stopped. She stopped because behind him the door was opening, and there she was. Alexandra. Richard saw Kristin putting their daughter behind her, protecting her, as if she expected Alexandra to start shooting.

“I go,” Alexandra said, and she was pulling her knit cap over her ears. “I go.”

“No. You should stay. You have to stay. But tell me now, tell me once and for all: Did you shoot”—and he paused, unsure whether he was pronouncing the thug’s name correctly—“Kirill? Did you?”

He knew that Alexandra had heard him; she had to have heard him. But she didn’t answer, because she and Kristin were staring at each other. Or, to be precise, Kristin was staring at Alexandra. And Alexandra? She was looking both at his wife and his daughter, her gaze flat, her expression impenetrable. Melissa was peering around her mother’s ribs, as if Kristin were a tree and this were only a game of hide-and-seek.

“Tell me!”

She didn’t entirely return to him. Her focus was still elsewhere, though she was turning her head ever so slightly. Somehow, something in addition to his wife and his daughter had stolen her attention.

“He shot himself,” she said finally.