Page 30 of Marrying the Pakhan

“I like her too.” He says it simply, no hesitation, and the plainness of it lands harder than if he’d dressed it up. “More than I expected to, if I’m honest.”

“Me too. About all of it, I mean.”

He’s quiet for a moment, turning his own glass in his hands without drinking from it, and the silence stretches long enough that I start counting the seconds without meaning to.

13

HARPER

Ginger’s pushing peas around her plate in the pattern she uses when she’s building up to something, arranging them into a line before scattering them again.

I’ve learned to recognize it as thinking out loud without words yet, a habit that started right after Mia died and never fully went away.

“There’s a thing at school,” she says finally, not looking up. “In three weeks. Parents come, and you bring a project, and there’s a table with your name on it.”

“Sounds important,” Viktor says.

“It is. Ms. Alvarez said it’s a big deal.” She finally looks up, straight at him, not at me. “Are you gonna come to my school thing?”

The table goes quiet for a second. I keep my eyes on my own plate, giving them the space to have this.

“When exactly is it?”

“The nineteenth. It’s a Thursday. Mrs. Bennett said Thursdays are usually good for you.”

Viktor almost smiles at that, the fact that she’s clearly done her homework on his schedule before asking. “The nineteenth works. I’ll be there.”

“Promise?”

“I don’t say things I don’t mean, Ginger. If I say I’ll be there, I’ll be there.”

She studies him for a long moment, the same suspicious scrutiny she gave him the first week in this house.

Four months ago, she wouldn’t have asked. Four months ago, she’d have assumed the answer was no, because that’s what the last two years taught her: that adults leave, that promises about future dates aren’t reliable currency.

Now she’s asking Viktor to commit to a Thursday three weeks out like it’s a foregone conclusion he’ll say yes.

He did say yes, immediately, without hedging.

I don’t know when I stopped bracing for this to end. I only notice it now, watching her go back to her dinner completely unbothered, that the bracing has quietly stopped.

“What’s the project going to be about?” Viktor asks her, and she launches into a full debate with herself out loud, animals versus something about space, weighing the merits of each with total seriousness while he listens like the decision genuinely matters.

“Animals are easier to draw,” she reasons, mostly to herself. “But space has more colors. Ms. Alvarez likes colors.”

“You could do both. A space animal.”

Ginger stops mid-bite, considering this with the gravity of someone who’s just been handed the answer to a much larger question. “That’s actually really good.”

“I have my moments.”

After dinner, he helps her with homework at the kitchen table while I clean up.

I catch myself watching them more than I’m watching the dishes, the way he leans in to check her math, the way she leans into him without seeming to notice she’s doing it.

It’s comfortable in a way that used to take her weeks to reach with anyone new, and it took him a fraction of that time, patience doing what nothing else could.

He doesn’t rush her through the long division the way I would, tired and half distracted most nights. He lets her get it wrong twice before she gets it right, lets her feel the satisfaction of arriving there herself instead of just handing her the answer.