Page 132 of Cruel Demands

“She is living in your house.”

“For her safety. She is in my house to keep her out of it.”

“Do you hear yourself? Does that make sense to you? Safety is not the same thing as freedom. You should send her home to her own mother.”

“No,” I say. “Safety keeps people alive long enough to complain about freedom.”

For the first time, anger flashes openly across her face. “And that,” she says, “is exactly what he would have said.”

We seethe equally as only mother and son can, and after a moment, I say through clenched teeth, “Well, Mother, it must be partially true as you are alive to complain about him.”

She stands up angrily, and I sigh and roll my eyes. “Where are you going?”

“To send for the girl. She is eating with me tonight.”

“Suit yourself, but it makes you no better than me ordering her around.”

She pauses at the door and considers, then decides against whatever she was going to say and slams the door so hard that the art on my walls and my glass bottles of liquor rattle.

I don’t expect Taylor to submit easily to an invitation from my mother simply because it is phrased more politely than one of my orders. My mother is a tough woman, but Taylor is a tougher nut to crack. I might be hungry too, with all the food analogies floating in my own head.

Eventually I wander down to the smaller kitchen in my mother’s wing to see if she actually managed to convince Taylor to eat with her or if Taylor is still moping in the guest room and only accepting tray meals. She has been slightly depressed as the awareness has settled in that she no longer lives with Anya and I cannot tell her when she can return. I cannot tell her because I do not know. And because returning safely will likely mean Orlov is dead. That a man is dead because of her.

Not really because of her, of course. Because of me. Because of him. Because he made the mistake of threatening something that belongs to me. But Taylor is a better person than I am, and unfortunately that distinction will probably cause her distress rather than comfort her.

But I find Taylor at the center island, her knees in a stool, leaning over the counter, wearing one of my mother’s aprons over her pajamas. It says KISS THE COOK in English. My mother got it at a yard sale years ago, and it made her laugh so hard that my father bought it for her immediately. It is one of her prized possessions.

I stop and watch in silence. They are both rolling dough, but Taylor’s keeps sticking to her rolling pin. “It keeps sticking,” Taylor says, waving her rolling pin in the air.

“Because you are afraid of it. Dough can sense fear.”

“I’ll just use my hands,” Taylor groans and gathers it off the pin, but when she presses both palms into it, the dough sticks to her fingers. She lifts her hands. “This feels personal.”

My mother laughs, and it is not the thin, elegant laugh she uses for company. It is a real one. I cannot remember the last time I heard it. “You are lingering. Pull back after you knead,” she says. “Again. Here.” My mother dabs a few drops of oil onto Taylor’s hands.

Taylor breathes an audible sigh of relief when she’s finally able to roll the dough out thin. My mother begins cutting circles from the dough with the top of a mason jar. Taylor tries to copy her and groans when the dough gets stuck in the top. She tries to scrape it out and ruins the circular shape.

I stifle a laugh.

“What do you want from your life, Miss Taylor?” my mother asks. “Are you doing it?”

Taylor looks up, a ruined ball of dough in her hand that she flattens on the counter. “That’s a heavy question for dumplings.”

“Food is when people tell the truth. This is why politicians prefer drinks.”

Taylor glances at me. I say nothing. She looks back down at the dough. “I thought I knew,” she says. My mother waits. Taylor presses the edge of a dumpling closed with careful fingers. “I thought I’d finish school. Get a good job. Help my family. Go home eventually.”

“What do you want now?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

“That is dangerous.”

“I’m aware.”

“No. You think danger is men following you or breaking into apartments. That is simple danger. The worse danger is waking one morning and realizing your life has been decided by people who claimed to love you.” Taylor’s cutting of dumplings slows, and she looks off into the distance, listening without looking at my mother. “Women in our world survive by knowing what they will not surrender,” she says. “You do not need to know everything you want. But you must know what no man gets to take.”

After a long moment, Taylor looks back at my mother and asks, “What did you refuse to surrender?”