All the Winters After (23 page)

FIFTY

How to explain to my passionate ten-year-old son that his beloved dog Walter was a broken and battered pile of agony at the bottom of a cliff? I can't. I won't. Glenn made his way down the treacherous drop—God only knows how he didn't kill himself in the process—to see if he could save our dear, sweet Walter, each step full of such consternation, knowing our dog would be dead or worse.

It was worse. Glenn said that when he found him, Walter was beyond any hope and suffering so that he looked to Glenn with those big dark eyes and begged for him to end the pain. I'm crying still as I write this. Glenn, of course, had brought a gun and didn't cry in front of Walter, but after he pulled the trigger, he confessed to me that he dropped to his knees, holding Walter to him and howling like they were of the same species. We all loved that dog. Glenn loved that dog. But he said he knew how much Kache
needed
that dog. And so we must lie to our own son. And this command from Glenn, who is so matter-of-fact about life and death. “It is too much for the boy,” he told me, crying again. “We need to tell him the Disneyland version.” And so I did, but I'm afraid it was a mistake, because Kache looks at us with an underlying suspicion, though he doesn't say anything.

Kache closed the journal and stuck it under his arm, heavyhearted and mystified, thinking about Walter. And his dad. It was a different version from what he'd been rehashing in his mind all these years. His father said that?
To protect Kache from the truth?
He had seen his father only as a bully. But now Kache wondered if there was another side to the man. Why else would his mother have stayed with him? She was a kind woman, a smart woman, a strong woman. She must have seen
something
in him.

Kache walked out to the canyon, and though he saw it from a new angle, it remained impossibly deep. It still scared him.

• • •

They had dropped the subject of visiting Nadia's family, but that didn't mean Kache wasn't thinking about it. Now that they knew Vladimir wasn't in the picture, Kache wanted Nadia to let her family know she was alive. Reconnect with them, free herself from the grip of her painful past—who wouldn't want that? To live fully here at the homestead, she needed to be able to go into town without ducking for cover.

The college application seemed to be the strongest motivator, but she hadn't mentioned it again, and Kache suspected that Nadia liked the idea of being accepted and going to college, but just the idea, not the reality of actually leaving and traveling somewhere else to live. It would be years before she'd be ready to move away, if ever. Most likely never. That was what he kept telling himself.

He kept quiet about her family. It was her decision.

The last of the garden had been harvested. The last of the canning was done. He walked back home and set the journal inside. Then he headed back out to finish stacking the bales in the barn. Nadia was milking Mooze. When she finished, she pulled her video camera out of her pocket, filming Kache as he stacked the hay.

“Another exciting day at the homestead,” he said, hamming it up.

“No. Natural,” she said. So he finished his work, wondering what winter would be like, Nadia and him burrowed in the house under the new down comforter while the snow piled up and up around them for days on end. Board games, cards, movies, books. Few responsibilities except to make sure the animals weren't freezing to death, keep the fire stoked, dig out between storms, maybe knock down the icicles when they got so big that they threatened to pierce them.

The temperature had plummeted, but they hadn't seen a hint of snow yet. He knew that once winter set in, it would be harder to get back to Nadia's family's village. Nadia must have been thinking the same thing, because later, when he came back from checking the nets at the beach, she met him at the door, wearing her new brown coat and new jeans, along with her hiking boots they'd bought from the catalog—not the stylish ones from Nordstrom.

“I'm ready. Let's go,” she said before he had a chance to pull his own boots off.

“Go where?” he asked, but he knew. Her eyes seemed bigger, like they had that night when he first saw her face peeking from under the bed.

She crammed her hands into her coat pockets as if she were plugging them into a source of courage. “The village. Come, let's go.”

“Why this sudden change?”

“You read your mother's story of Walter.”

“I did.”

“And this is something you are afraid to do, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And it is good that you read it, yes?”

He nodded.

“I am ready. I want to be brave also. And I see how much you miss your family and what a gift it would be to see them. You can't. But me, I have ability to make this trip. And the tide, it is very low and will get lower. Besides, if I am going to get my transcripts and birth certification for college, I must go now.” She sounded like she was presenting all the reasons to herself more than to Kache. She headed for the truck, her determined, long-legged strides reminding him of a moose starting across the road no matter what. She opened the truck door, closed herself in, and rolled down the window. “Hurry before my mind changes or this tide comes in.”

FIFTY-ONE

If there was a way to present herself in the most favorable light and still be truthful, Nadia did not know of it. That morning, she had tried on her
sarafan
, the colors still fairly bright because she never once wore it after she'd first arrived at the house. She covered her head in a scarf. She stared at her reflection, her cropped bangs peeking out, her earrings, the tiny diamond in her nose. She looked like a gypsy. She did not feel like herself at all, and the one thing she wanted was to present herself truthfully. There was no redemption in facing a lie with more lies. She changed into her new clothes and tried to imagine what her family's reaction would be. Would they recognize her? There was also the temptation to present Kache as her husband and not her live-in lover. Neither was ideal, but a marriage would certainly be preferred. Except what if Vladimir was still there? What if he still claimed she was his wife? They would think of her as an adulterer. And that would only be the beginning.

She should not think ahead this much. As they bounced and swayed along the drive up to the main road, she felt for the old handgun in her coat pocket.

She inhaled deeply and said, “I do not know what to expect. But I do know we will be miles from anyone who can help us if Vladimir is there and threatening us. Therefore, I have one of your father's pistols in my pocket.”

Kache raised his eyebrows. “That's probably overkill. So to speak.”

“I think you are right. I hope you are right. But in case you are not.”

“Do me a favor and at least put it in the glove compartment.”

She obliged, taking out the pair of sunglasses she kept there and putting them on, even though metallic-rimmed clouds shrouded the sun and seemed to have hooked themselves on the jagged tips of the mountains. When they reached the end of the five-mile private drive, Kache turned right onto the main road, toward the villages, instead of left toward Caboose.

She'd started on this trip back many times over the years, when the isolation chiseled her fear down to a sharp root. She wanted her mother and father, her sisters and brothers. She heard the folk songs they would break into around the dinner table. She would sing them in Russian, alone in the house, her lone voice eerie, not in any way comforting:
Farewell, curly locks. Farewell, auburn hair. Farewell, blue eyes. I won't be seeing you again.
She would cook some of her mother's dishes—the
leposhki
and
rebnea katlette
—and sit down at the table by herself. A bite, warm, delicious—browned bread dough pancakes, the salmon and mashed potato balls—but she could not get much of it past the lump in her throat.

She'd pack a small bag, picturing her parents' full house, the noise, the laughter, the teasing, the scolding. But also, the plenty she did not miss. Even if she had married Niko instead of Vladimir, she would no longer fit back into the village. The role of being a
khoziaki
, a house-hostess, the pressure to have children one after the other. The tight, unyielding grip on a way of life that she believed was meant to be left where it belonged, hundreds of years in the past. She did not fit in with people who separated themselves over how many fingers they used to make the sign of the cross when she did not feel compelled to make the sign of the cross at all, no matter how many fingers.

No, all of that would fade away once she hugged her mama and papa again. But then there was Vladimir. Always Vladimir.

And so she would unpack her bag and go out to the lone birch tree and rest her forehead against it. “You understand,” she would say. “You are not in the grove with your brothers and sisters and mother and father. I will come and talk to you, and we can ease each other's sorrow. The sparrows in your branches sing and from my hands eat. It is good for you to be here and for me to be here.” This brought comfort until another bout of loneliness would take over and she would go through it all again. Sometimes it was the birch tree that would bring her back to herself. Sometimes it was the garden, or Leo, or the noble mountains across the bay. Lately, it had been Kache and the video camera.

If she were to present her truest self to her family, it would be from behind her camera, with Kache at her side, filming her parents and brothers and sisters—how odd that was, yet also true! But her parents were leery of photography of any kind, so the camera had to stay behind.

“This is Ural, where I grew up. Where we lived before the split,” she told Kache as they approached her old village on the bank near the end of the road, a spread of brightly painted structures—houses, barns, a church—and plenty of tractors, trucks, SUVs. Satellite dishes?

“I told you,” Kache said, as if he could read her mind.

“I am shocked. But Altai will not have this. Ural is more conforming.” What she thought but didn't say was
This is where Niko and Katarina live with their children.
She wondered how many they had, if they lived in one of the houses she could see.

Kache had originally turned on the heat in the truck, but Nadia had turned it off miles ago. Still, a trickle of sweat ran down her rib cage. She felt sick to her stomach. It wasn't car sickness. Kache spoke to her, and she watched his lips move, but she barely heard him over the thrashing of her heart.

Returning was a very stupid thing to do. “Turn around,” she said. “Turn
around
.”

Instead, he pulled over. “Breathe. It's going to be okay.”

“You do not know this. And do not stop in Ural. That is the invitation for them to approach us.”

“Do you want me to keep going?”

“No. Yes. Wait,” she said. She took one deep breath. “Okay, yes, keep going.”

And so they drove on, until they rounded the last bend where the empty trailhead to Altai seemed to be waiting for them. Kache parked the truck, and Nadia reached for the glove compartment.

He said, “At least let me carry it.”

“Kache,” she said. “I mean no disrespect. But I have shot guns many, many more times than you have.”

“Everyone will be hugging you. It won't be safe.” He held his hand out, and she gave him the gun while she hoped and doubted and hoped again that her family would indeed hug her. “Don't worry,” he said. “I promise not to shoot my own foot. It will most likely stay in my zipped pocket, with the safety on.”

They began taking the switchbacks down to the beach. Nadia had already checked the tide schedule online and knew they had plenty of time to walk along the sand to the village. There was no other way in. They could have brought the ATV in the back of the truck, and if it had already snowed, she would have insisted on it. But she was glad for the time the walk took. It helped calm her nerves. Alone on the trail, Kache stopped, hugged her, and then kissed her. She remembered the time on the same trail when Niko had kissed her. It was her first kiss, snuck in, before they raced to catch up with the others.

But now, Kache and Nadia took their time. He lifted her sunglasses. “Are you okay? Do you want to keep going?”

“Do you mean keep kissing or keep walking?”

He smiled. “Either one. Both?”

“That might be difficult.”

“Yeah, I suppose.” He let her sunglasses fall back in place, kissed the diamond stud on the side of her nose, and turned to lead the way.

They continued down the trail. At one point, Kache bent to inspect bear scat.

Nadia examined it. “This, it is not fresh. We can always fire gun into air to scare one.”

Kache gave her a look that said firing the gun might scare him worse than it would scare the bear.

The trail dropped them onto the beach, where they jogged a bit toward the end of the bay—not because they were in a hurry (they definitely weren't) but because they needed to expend their nervous energy. A lone bald eagle watched them from its perch on the top of a dead spruce where the forest met the sand. The bay had receded. The distant waves slammed out their rhythm, marking time. Almost ten years before, Nadia ran down this beach, but in the opposite direction.

She took Kache's hand, and they slowed to pick their way along the rocks, dodging driftwood, tide pools, piles of long, tangled kelp, chunks of coal. Gulls bickered over a dead lingcod. Nadia bent over an aggregate anemone. Its green tentacles seemed to invite her in, and when she placed her finger in its center, they gently grasped onto it, holding tight until she pulled back and they let go.

The clouds had darkened and swept toward them, locking the sky in, low and gray. She wished for the sun to break through and lighten her mood, which also felt low and gray, as if the sky were a lid pressing down on them. She half worried, half hoped that she wouldn't be able to find the next trailhead to Altai, that it would have been taken over by salmonberry and alder bushes. She couldn't even be sure the village was still here. Perhaps they had given in to having a priest and returned to Ural.

But there was the second trailhead, as it had been before, cleared, dirt-packed, steep switchbacks that took you one way and then another in an indecisive reverie climbing upward. Where before she had been sweating, now she pulled her coat tighter around her. Chills. Her body balked, wondering when she would turn around. She'd never come this far, not even close.

The trail seemed shorter than she remembered, and too soon, they came upon Altai, too late to turn back, because children already peeked out from behind women's long skirts and men walked toward her and Kache. Nadia's eyes filled with tears, so she could not see who these men were, whether she knew them. They spoke in Russian, greeting Kache, but when he looked to Nadia, they switched to English.

“Brother, can we help you? Are you lost?” a tall man asked. Nadia did not recognize him or the others.

“We're hoping we can speak with you.”

At the word
we
, the men looked Kache and Nadia over. “What would you like to speak about?”

Nadia took a step toward them so that she was slightly in front of Kache. She said in the old Russian, “I need to talk to Irina and Dmitri Oleska. I have important information for them.”

The man who'd first spoken nodded. “We will take you to their home.”

Nadia said, “I appreciate your kindness, but that won't be necessary. I know where it is located. Thank you.” She motioned with her head to Kache, and they walked off toward her old home.

The group that had formed followed along behind them, with some of the children prancing ahead, calling out to her parents, “Irina, Dmitri, the strangers have come to see you!”

Nadia shook. A young woman broke through the crowd and approached her.

“If you please? Take off your glasses so I can see your eyes,” she said.

Nadia took off her glasses, but her tears were already escaping, running down her cheeks. “It is me, little sister. Anna, I am your Nadi.”

Anna cried out and reached her arms around Nadia, and they fell to the ground, embracing. And then Anna was yanked away, Nadia was pulled to her feet, and her mother—a bit thinner and more lined—held Nadia's shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. Her mother cupped her chin and the side of her neck. Then she slid her grasp down both of Nadia's arms. Her lips trembled, her pale eyes wet with questions. “Nadi? Nadi?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“It is miracle? God has brought you back to life?”

“No, Mama. I have been alive all this time. Always alive.” Nadia lay her hand flat along the side of her mother's cheek. “I am so sorry.”

“You are alive? You are
alive
.” Her words croaked out in the midst of laughter and cries. And then her father was twirling her around and around, holding her waist. More crying and laughter. The entire village quaked as if the land under it shifted. No one asked, “Where have you been?” or “Who is this man?” Everyone was far too overtaken by emotion, too busy praising God for the miracle to ask the obvious.

The crowd suddenly grew quiet and parted. Nadia's grandmother approached her with her crooked smile and wet eyes.

“Hi, Baba,” Nadia said.

Her grandmother threw her arms around Nadia and whispered into her ear, “It is you! My precious Nadia, you are more beautiful than ever.”

It wasn't until her mother and father, along with her ten siblings—for word spreads fast in so small a village—had pulled her from the mob and taken her into their home, painted a lovely robin's-egg blue and sunny yellow, and directed her and Kache to sit that the questions began. They came one after another after another, without any pause for an answer, while her grandmother sat stoically, listening.

“What happened to you?”

“Where did you go?”

“Why did you cut your hair?”

“Who is this man? Is he your husband?”

“Where are your children?”

“Are you hurt?”

“Were you held captive?”

“Why haven't you come home to us?”

“Why are you dressed in worldly clothes? What is in your nose?”

“Why are all those earrings in your ears?”

“Did you know it has been almost ten years?
Ten years?
”

With questions zooming at her from every direction, Nadia felt like she stood at one of those intersections in Anchorage—only this was where her wish to share nothing and her wish for them to know all intersected. Where to begin, how much to divulge? In the corner, the shrine of icons and hand-rolled candles, the old gold jewelry and ancient texts. The patron saints stared, waiting for her answers. Upon entering the house, every person had turned to this shrine and bowed repeatedly and made the sign of the cross. Every person except Nadia and Kache. She looked to Kache, who stood off to the side with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He raised his eyebrows, and she gave him a slight nod.

He said, “Nadia will answer your questions. But it's difficult for her. It's not an easy thing to tell. Let's all sit back for a minute and catch our breath and let her tell you her story. But first, will you answer an important question that we have? Where is Vladimir?”