Page 140 of Nine Months to Bear

A light clicks on, and there she is: my babushka, perched on her favorite stool like a czarina holding court. The scent of honey cake mingles with the patchouli incense she burns for her arthritis, creating a cloud of nostalgia that makes my chest ache.

“You’re drunk.” She doesn’t look up from slicing themedovik, each layer precise despite her trembling hands.

“Not drunk enough for this; that’s for damn sure.”

“Sit.” She pushes a plate toward me. “Eat.”

I obey because refusing her is like refusing gravity—pointless and exhausting. Plus, I’m fucking starved.

The cake is perfect, sweet and dense, but it sits in my stomach like cement.

“You look like your father tonight.” Her cloudy eyes pierce through me anyway. “Same hollow expression. Same smell of failure.”

I start to argue back, but she holds up a hand. “Don’t lie to me, Stefushka. I changed your diapers; I know when you’re full of shit.” She reaches across the counter, her papery hand covering mine. “That girl upstairs? The one you’ve moved into your bedroom but won’t touch? She’s trying to save you if you’d stop being so thick-headed.”

“She’s a business arrangement.”

Babushka’s laugh says what she thinks of that. “Business. That’s what your father called it when he married your mother instead of following his heart. Look how that ended—with his blood onyour mother’s hands and her in bed with his brother before the body was cold.”

Themedovikturns to sand in my mouth. “That won’t happen to me.”

“Because you’re stronger? Smarter?” She purses up her lips. “Or because you’re too much of a coward to even try?”

“I’m protecting myself.”

“God forbid you are forced to reckon with the possibility that someone might actually give a damn about you beyond your money and your violence, Stefushka.” Her voice cracks, and for a moment, I see how old she really is. How tired. “You haven’t smiled—really smiled—in years. Not since you started building these walls around yourself.”

“The walls keep me alive.”

“The walls keep youalone.” She stands, joints creaking. “Your father wrote in journals, did you know that? Every night, filling pages with things he couldn’t say out loud. I found them after he died.”

I know this already, but for some reason, my throat closes. “What did they say?” I croak out.

“That he loved the wrong woman. He was too weak to choose Antonia, but he hoped his son would be braver.” She cups my face with both hands, forcing me to meet her eyes. “But here you are, making the same mistakes. Pushing away love because you’re terrified of being vulnerable.”

“I’m too damaged for love.”

“Oh, Stefan. Sometimes,” she sighs, pressing a kiss to my forehead, “you talk out of your ass.”

She shuffles toward the door, leaving me alone with the half-eaten cake and the weight of her disappointment. The kitchen feels smaller without her. The walls press in.

I spy a notepad and a spare pen lying by the refrigerator. Tools for the kitchen staff to keep groceries stocked, but it feels like the universe put them for me and me alone. The pen feels foreign in my hand as I press it to paper.

She’s right,I write.I am my father’s son.

I tried this before and it didn’t work. This time, though, the words flow like blood from a wound. I write about Olivia. About myself. About pasts forgotten and futures foreclosed.

I write until my hand cramps, filling pages with confessions I’ll never speak aloud. This is what my father did: wrestled with demons on paper because saying them out loud would make them real.

But they’re already real. The way I need her is real. The way I’m destroying her is real.

I don’t know how long I sit there or how much I write. I just bleed onto the page, even as I wonder what good this is going to do. It’s not until sunlight starts to peek through the curtains that I finally run out of things to say.

I close the journal, but the last words remain burned into my brain:

I think I love her.

And I think it’s going to kill us both.