Page 28 of The Beast of Moscow

“I can still swing the damn thing.”

“So?” Igor asked, frustration rising like his tone.

Vaslav chuckled, continuing his trek to the back of the house. “Every other day of the week, on the other hand, you think I’m dying.”

Silence answered that.

What more really needed to be said?

9.

For the second time in less than two weeks, Vera opened the front door of her home to find a potted plant sitting on the stoop. In a square, simple terracotta pot, the green branches that stuck up from dark soil made her pause. With the phone already in her hand, she considered calling her mother right back to pass her thanks along to her father.

Something about the plant stopped her, though.

Vera even tilted her head to the side a bit, already curious. She expected to bend down and flip the plain white tag over to find something from the greenhouse where it had been sold, but the handwriting spelling out instructions for planting and caring for the Syringa vulgaris accompanied no other information.

Krasavitsa Moskvy someone had written in English under the name of the plant. Though she already knew what that meant, the writing continued to say Beauty of Moscow. Plant next spring, water well once a week until then, and keep it in the sun as much as you can. A thank you. - V

Vera surveyed the quiet stoop and street for any sign of the person who had left the lilac shrub, but she found no one. Who knew when they had left it? She really should put that camera on her front door like her father had suggested more than a few times already.

The bright, early August sun overhead beamed down on Vera and the pot in her hands as she straightened up with it to give the shrub a closer look.

“He didn’t stay very long,” called her neighbor from his yard.

“Who?”

The man pointed at the pot. “Whoever dropped off that. Didn’t take his sunglasses off, didn’t say hi when he walked past, and the guy waiting on the street already had his door open again before he got back. I’m surprised you didn’t hear the tires squealing.”

Vera peered at the cursive V on the white card stock with the instructions. The jagged hole through the thick paper and twine used to lop through it to tie the card to a branch seemed hasty while the handwritten note had clearly taken more than a minute.

“Did you find yourself an admirer, Vera?” her neighbor asked.

She gave the man a look. “Did you sneak up my steps and read what was on this?”

She wasn’t offended. Anatoly was a good neighbor in the way he kept an eye out for anything his fellow neighbors might need to watch out for. The retired doctor’s only real companions since his wife died was his community.

Vera didn’t mind his nosiness.

“Maybe,” her neighbor said, chuckling. “You didn’t answer my question, either young lady.”

Vera glanced down at the note again, parroting his smartass reply right back, “Maybe.”

Her teasing was just that, though. A joke. Her father was the only man who had someone leave flowers or plants for her to love and nurture, seeing as he knew about her hobby that she’d picked up after quitting ballet full time. What else was she going to spend her time doing?

Otherwise, the standard birthday flowers or other important events came with bouquets, but not random lilac shrubs in a terracotta pot that looked as though it had seen a few plants before the one that now called it home.

And that made her just a little more than curious about it. Too bad she didn’t have the time to consider it.

“How much longer are you going to stare at that before you take it in the house?”

“Mind your business, Mr. Anatoly. And hey, we’re supposed to get rain tomorrow,” she told her neighbor. “Stop wasting water.”

The old man laughed, even daring to lift his garden hose higher to send a spray of cold water dangerously close to her villa stoop. The threat of getting wet, but also not wanting to be late for her ballet class, sent Vera back inside with a new plant to add to her collection. She would have to come back to the plant, and the stranger who’d left it behind, later.

But even as she exited the villa again, locked the door, and shared lighthearted jabs with her neighbor along the fence line of their properties, the surprise gift wasn’t far from her mind.

Who left it?