Page 87 of Red Rooster

19

Buffalo, New York

It was a long driveway. A trio of black mailboxes, hand-painted with the Baskin name, marked the head of it; two well-worn grooves in the heat-burned summer grass led down a slight incline, across a wide expanse of empty field, and then began climbing again toward the compound. That’s what her dad always called the place: the compound. With three main houses, half a dozen smaller domiciles that housed her cousins who wouldn’t fly the coop, two workshops, and three warehouses, it certainlylookedandfeltlike the sort of place someone would call a compound.

Nikita slowed the Barracuda as they started to climb the long, gradual hill that would take them to the main house, his gaze darting between the windshield and the windows to either side. He made a snorting, choking sort of sound when they passed the first warehouse: a massive steel building painted classic barn red.

“You didn’t tell me your family’s a bunch of farmers,” he muttered, and she couldn’t decide if he sounded disgusted…or uncertain.

“Furniture makers,” she corrected, filled with a strange mix of emotions herself. Turning into the driveway, going over those first ruts where rainwater had carved the gravel away from the shoulder of the road, had always tugged at the knot she seemed to carry with her when she was away from home. Whether it was the drama of high school, or the stress of community college, or the rigors of the academy, patrol, and finally her detective work, the world outside these fifty acres fed tension into her body. A transfer so gradual she never noticed it until she started down the old familiar tire tracks in the grass of the front field and realized she could breathe again, her chest loose and her heart light.

She felt that now, the relief so sudden and strong it was almost dizzying – that’s how crazy things had been. But she knew trepidation, too. Her dad had met Lanny, but no one else had. And it wasn’t just her lover – herimmortallover – she was bringing to meet her entire family. She had no idea which would be stranger to everyone: the return of the prodigal great-grandpa, or the presence of the former heir to the Russian empire.

It was a toss-up.

“How much farther’s the house?” Nikita grumbled.

She checked the rearview mirror and saw Lanny and his Expedition keeping pace behind them. “Oneof the houses, you mean. And not much farther. Up past those trees.”

“One? Jesus…”

The driveway curved through a copse of ancient, towering oaks, their wide trunks limned in the dazzling, dew-drenched gold of first light. They’d stopped and waited, on the way up, choking down burgers at an all-night diner; Lanny and Nikita smoking cigarettes in the parking lot as the breeze from passing eighteen-wheelers tried to blow out their matches. Exhausted, dreaming of her bed in her old room, and her mother’s strong embrace, Trina had wanted to drive straight through. But she’d realized, considering the company she was bringing, that turning up at four in the morning, in the bewildering dark, wasn’t the best idea. And it turned out that she’d needed to see the place in the sunrise light, smiling as they cleared the last of the trees and the main house came into view.

It was low and sprawling, built by hand by her grandfather and his half-brother when they’d first come to America, an unremarkable brown board and batten siding with a gently sloped roof. There’d been no blueprint, and the inside was gloriously confusing and unconventional, rooms leading into other rooms, going on into seeming forever.

Her grandparents’ new place looked down on it from the hill above, and off to the right, her uncle had built a midcentury stone ranch whose windows caught the orange fire of the rising sun. Beyond lay the other outbuildings, the cottages, the rest of the warehouses and the workshops, all of it threaded down narrow tracks that wended through trees older than her entire family lineage; but those three houses were the heart of the place.

Trina let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “Home sweet home,” she murmured. When she glanced over at Nikita, his mouth was set, his knuckles white on the wheel. “Don’t forget we’re Russian. This isn’t even gonna be close to the weirdest thing they’ve ever heard.”

He looked like he tried to smile, the expression pained.

They parked both cars in the gravel in front of the house, beside her dad’s truck, and Trina registered surprise and nervousness on everyone’s faces.

“Dude. Farmer Baskin,” Lanny muttered.

“Not a farmer,” she said. “Also, why do you guys sound like that’s abadthing?”

Jamie chafed at his arms as if he was cold, jaw trembling slightly. “You told them we were coming, right?”

“I did,” she hedged. She’d texted her mom about an hour ago that she was coming and bringing friends – she’d just failed to mention who said friends were.

He nodded, looking unconvinced.

Alexei was the only one who seemed unbothered. He surveyed the land around them with a small, pleased smile. “I like it. Reminds me of holidaying in Poland.”

“Glad the tsar approves,” she said, only half-joking. “Okay, so–”

She heard the front door of the house open behind her, and her mother called, “Trina?”

She turned around with a smile ready, heart pounding. “Hi, Mom.”

It was clearly a workshop day, her mother dressed in an old, patched pair of her husband’s overalls, the ankles cuffed, the front pocket holding a pair of yellow leather work gloves. Her hair was pulled back, little auburn wisps framing her face. Trina hadn’t inherited her eyes – warm brown, expressive and nothing like the cold, calculating Baskin blue. Eyes that moved across their little group with open curiosity. “When you said ‘friends,’” she started, “I didn’t think – oh, hi, Lanny.”

“Hi, Mrs. B.”

“…that you meant…” And then her gaze found Nikita. And widened, mouth opening a fraction in shock.

Trina knew exactly what she was thinking of. In the Russian tradition, there was a short stretch of hallway in the house, between the den and the kitchen, that was completely dominated by family photos: a variety of posed school portraits and candid shots. In the very center was a blown-up black and white snapshot of her grandfather, Kolya, and his wife, their arms around one another, standing on the building site of the house, before they’d even broken ground. In that photo, her grandfather looked Hollywood handsome: lean and broad-shouldered, with a narrow, sharp-edged face, and light eyes; his smile just a little wicked. In that photo, Kolya Baskin was the spitting image of his father: Nikita.