Page 11 of Crimson

Maxim had been sitting on the couch when she interrupted him with her knock on the door. He still had the television blaring—some football match, which was currently tied 0-0. Nadia wished he would turn it off. She had a bad enough headache already, without the abrupt cheers of the crowd, and the droning dialogue of the commentators.

She sat down on his couch, curling up her feet beneath her.

“You want a drink?” Maxim asked. She saw he was already most of the way through a whiskey on the rocks, which probably wasn’t his first one of the night, judging from his slightly unsteady demeanor.

“No thanks,” she said.

“So, how did it go?” Maxim asked.

“It was fine,” Nadia said. “Just...very tiring.”

“Hmm,” Maxim said. She could see his eyes sliding past hers to check the score on the television just beyond her right shoulder.

“I did find something yesterday, though,” Nadia said. “When I went to great-aunt Galina’s house.”

“Yeah?”

“She gave me an old journal of my mother’s.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s in Cyrillic, but I’m reading it, slowly.”

“Mmm.”

“She wrote it right before she came to Paris. When she was still living in Moscow.”

She could tell that Maxim had zero interest in any of this, but she pressed on doggedly.

“It made me want to go back there. To Moscow. I’d like to stay at my grandfather’s house for a while.”

This got his attention, finally.

“What?” Maxim said, his eyes returning to hers at last, instead of the glowing television screen.

“I want to go to Moscow,” Nadia repeated. “Instead of Ibiza or wherever.”

“What for, though?” Maxim said, in a petulant tone. He didn’t care for Russia any more than she did, though he had family in Moscow as well.

“I just want to reconnect with some of that family,” Nadia said. “I want to go stay in my mom’s old room.”

Maxim wrinkled up his handsome face, making a disdainful expression that Nadia particularly disliked.

“Isn’t that sort of...weird?” he said. “Your mom hasn’t lived there in thirty-five years. What’s the point?”

Nadia’s exhaustion made her short-tempered. Usually when Maxim opposed something she wanted to do, she caved to his pressure, or at the very least tried to find a compromise. But perhaps because she’d been so miserable the last week, or because she was remembering the younger Samara’s insolent spirit as channeled through the diary, Nadia sat up a little straighter on the couch and fixed Maxim with a stern expression.

“You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to,” she said, “But I’m going.”

Maxim looked a little startled. He wasn’t used to Nadia being so adamant.

“Fine,” he said slowly. “I’ll come with you. When do you want to leave?”

“Soon,” Nadia said. “As soon as I finish sorting out my mother’s house.”

* * *

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