Page 66 of True North
“Okay,” Misha said. He couldn’t deny that he was ready to fall face-first into a pillow for approximately a hundred years. “Thanks, Lenny.”
The guest room was a small room off the kitchen filled almost entirely by the bed, neatly made in crisp white bedding. Misha took Lenny up on his offers of a shower and a change of clothes, then climbed between the sheets and, despite his post-dinner nap, fell asleep like he was sinking into deep water. He woke once in the middle of the night and realized the dog had clambered onto the bed with him and was curled up asleep at his feet. He reached down to pet her briefly, then fell back asleep.
When he woke again, sunlight was streaming through the blinds and casting patterns across the bedspread. Misha reached up and patted his hand along the windowsill until he found his phone. It was nearly eight; he had slept in. The dog was gone, but Misha didn’t hear any sounds through the slightly open door. He had slept well and deeply.
He had several new text messages from JT. He didn’t read them.
The bed was warm, the mattress softer than he usually preferred but so comfortable he was tempted to roll back over and try to sleep some more. He got up, though, and creaked the door open. The house was silent. He examined the coffee maker on the kitchen counter, which appeared to be a simple drip maker. Unlike JT’s annoying French press or even more annoying spaceship machine, Misha could figure this one out all on his own. He brewed a pot and took a cup out to the patio. The sun was up and rising above the trees on the opposite bank. Along the water’s edge, a heron waded in the shallows.
After some time, he heard the screen door open, and turned to see Marie coming out of the house, barefoot and wrapped in a white cotton bathrobe, and holding a coffee cup. She smiled at him as she approached and said, “You’re up early.”
It wasn’t that early, or maybe JT had just ruined Misha’s sense of what constituted an appropriate time to wake up.
He hadn’t said anything, but Marie laughed and said, “We keep late hours because of the pub. Thanks for making coffee.”
“Thank you for let me stay here,” Misha said, feeling awkward. He recognized Marie from shifter events, but he had never spoken to her before, and dressed in her husband’s spare sweatpants rolled up several times at the ankles wasn’t the way he would have chosen to start their acquaintance.
She sat in the chair beside him. “We’re happy to. Glad we could help.” She took a sip of her coffee. “Lenny wants me to try to talk to you, but I don’t know if I’m the person you really need to be talking to.”
Misha stared down at his knees projecting over the edge of his chair. He didn’t want to think about JT right now. JT saying he wasn’t communicative. JT saying he’d caused a bother. Well, JT wasn’t wrong.
There were other people he needed to talk to. Marie didn’t know about them, but they were in his thoughts every day, weighing on his mind, weighing him down with guilt. He had been thinking obsessively about his family since his phone was taken away at the police station the night he was arrested. At that time, he hadn’t thought he’d be released, and had spent every night in jail wondering if they would ever learn what had happened to him.
“Excuse me,” he said to Marie. She smiled at him as he rose to his feet.
He went around to the front of the house and sat in one of the two rocking chairs on the front porch, shady enough at this time of the morning that his bare arms prickled with the chill. Ferns in baskets hung from the ceiling. Misha did the familiar mental math to calculate the time in Khabarovsk. It was nighttime there, not too late, but late enough that his parents would probably be asleep. Katya would be awake, though. She had always been sort of a night owl. He needed her forgiveness more than anyone’s.
He had installed WhatsApp on his phone but never opened it. He did now, and had a moment of panic about his password, but it turned out to be the same one he used for everything.
He had so many messages—so many. He didn’t read any of them. He hovered his thumb over Katya’s icon for a moment, then opened their message thread. She had actually messaged him since his disappearance from Toronto, a single message saying,Where are you?Instead of replying, he hit the icon to start a video call.
She answered almost immediately. Her hair was down and her glasses were off, but he recognized the teal fabric of her sofa behind her, so he hadn’t woken her. “Misha?” she demanded.
“It’s me,” he said, holding his phone up to squint at her face through his abruptly tear-filled eyes. “Hi, Katyusha.”
“Don’t call me that. Why are you calling so late?” She covered her eyes with one hand and shook her head. “Sorry. I’m just so—we all thought you were dead. It’s been almost a year.”
This was exactly why he hadn’t called before: hearing the pain in Katya’s voice and knowing he was the cause. “I know. I’m sorry. I was in the woods.”
“In the—you mean as a bear?”
Misha nodded. “Yeah. I lost track of time, I guess. You know how it is.”
“But you’re okay now? You’re safe? Where are you?”
“In Sault Ste. Marie. I know you don’t know where that is, just give me a second. It’s northwest of Toronto, right by the big lakes. I’ve been staying with someone here.”
“Staying,” she repeated. “For how long?”
Misha braced himself. “Uh, for like a month now? Month and a half.”
Katya watched him from the screen. They weren’t identical twins, obviously, but people had always commented on how alike they looked, and he saw himself now in Katya’s weary face, the shape of her nose, the cowlick on one side of her head. “You know,” she said, her tone mild, “mom cries about you all the time. She’s started going to church every day to light candles for you. And you’ve been human again for a month and a half and you never bothered to call?”
“Youdidn’t bother to call,” Misha snapped. “For two years! I sent you so many messages. I begged mom and dad to ask you to call. I might have thoughtyouwere dead if it weren’t for them.”
She sighed heavily. “Okay, I know. I shouldn’t have done that. I just couldn’t believe you left us. I was so mad at you for so long. And then by the time I missed you more than I was angry with you, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know anything about your life anymore and it felt weird to send you a message like, oh hey, what’s up, let’s chat.”
“That’s the same reason I didn’t call anyone,” Misha said.