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“You missed a lot of school,” Kristiana says. “I remember too.”

“Well, after that, Mirdza still loved shrimp,” I say. “Whereas I’ve never eaten it since. Even the idea of it repulses me.”

Kris leans her head against the back of her seat and expels all her air. “But what does shrimp have to do—”

“People can go through the exact same thing and react differently,” I say. “Just like that incident with the shrimp, a lifetime with Martinš has soured me on ever dating. Now let it go. Please.”

Because no matter how much they push, and no matter how happy they are eating shrimp, they’ll never make me into a seafood girl.

13

No one has a perfect mom. I mean, Kristiana kind of did, but I’m sure even she had her flaws. I know that. I’ve always known that people aren’t perfect, and I never expected perfection from my mother.

I did expect honesty.

That was pretty stupid in retrospect. I mean, how many times do parents lie to their children? It starts nearly as soon as kids can talk.

“We’re almost there,” they say, with hours yet to go in the road trip.

Or how about, “Children in China are starving, so you better eat these lima beans.” That one may be true, but it has very little bearing on the nasty food on my plate. It’s a manipulation at the very least.

One of my favorites has always been, “If you make that weird face too long, your mouth will get stuck that way.” In twenty-six years of life, I’ve yet to see anyone walking around with a face that was stuck with their tongue out or anything similar.

But at least in those cases, your parent’s trying to help you.

My mom started lying to me about a lot of things after Martinš came into our lives. She’d say she had fallen. She’d tell me that she wanted to spend their money on beer instead of food. She’d tell me she was happy when she clearly was not. Most of those lies were still calculated to spare me from pain and fear. But the very first time she told me that she was going to leave him. . .and then she didn’t? The first time she told me she really thought he’d change?

Those lies were really hard for me to take.

She didn’t tell them to help me.

She didn’t say those things for my benefit at all. She did them to cover for her own cowardice and fear. They made me very, very leery of anyone who lies. Ever. The reason that I have virtually no friends is that as soon as someone lies to me, my trust is just gone, and it can’t be repaired.

There are really only two people in the world that I trust—Kris and Mirdza.

As we drive back, I get a little emotional thinking about how they dropped everything when I called and flew to Russia. I mean, sure, the guys might have come because they heard about the grey horse that saved me.

But Kris and Mirdza came for me.

Dinner’s ready when we arrive—I could get used to this—and it’s even nicer than our meal earlier. Being rich is just as good as I always thought it would be. “Do you always eat like this?” I ask. “Because I would gain so much weight that I’d have to find a new job.”

Actually, forget a job. If I could afford to eat like this, I wouldn’t need a job, right?

“Worth it,” Mirdza says, spearing a pierogi.

I’ve loaded my plate up with way too much food. I have no hope of actually finishing it. Alexei appears to be making pretty good progress. Maybe he’ll want to eat whatever I don’t.

But that thought makes me wonder.

“Hey, do you guys ever colic?”

Aleks freezes. “Do you mean, do we get a stomach ache and die from it when the weather changes or we eat something odd?” His lip twitches.

“Well, it sounds dumb when you say it like that.”

Kristiana laughs. “Horses only colic because they can’t vomit. These guys can change forms and puke out anything at all. It did take Aleks a while before he was ready to embrace junk food, though.”

“Preservatives taste funny,” Aleksandr says.