Page 24 of The Lies Between Lovers

She was also clean.

Incredibly so, favoring white tiles in her kitchen with cream-toned grout that he didn’t think saw a speck of dirt which was amazing considering the number of plants around. There also wasn’t a pet to speak of in the place.

As far as he’d noticed.

Instead of answering her question, he tried to deflect.

“I didn’t mention it earlier when you first came back downstairs, but I like the dress,” he said, nodding at the beige sweater dress she’d changed into with sleeves pushed up to her elbows. It hugged her every curve in a way that reminded him he had not yet gotten to properly explore this woman’s body in the way it deserved. A shame, that. The skirt fell just above her knees—the perfect height for a good pair of autumn boots. “Although, the towel gave me more to look at.”

Vera didn’t even bite on his bait. Although, he did enjoy her blush at the crude compliment.

“Mmhmm. What was that?” she asked him again, pointing at the pot on the table.

“It’s nothing special,” he returned, shoving the plastic bag into his pants pocket. The same place he’d kept the bag when he first arrived, although then he had simply tied off at the top with a knot to keep the contents from spilling out. Vera didn’t look like she believed him, and the fact that she remained in the doorway with the teal colored, metal watering can hanging limply from her right hand said she wanted a better answer. “It’s just a bit of ashes I add to each of the pots.”

That earned him a reaction.

Her brow furrowed.

“The lilac pots?”

Vaslav cleared his throat and turned back to the table. Despite cursing himself internally for not getting the job of dumping the ashes into the pot faster, and assuming he had enough time before she returned, he said, “Da, the lilacs only.”

“I don’t understand. Does it help them take to the soil or—”

“Not as far as I know.”

By then, she’d reached his spot at her kitchen table again. Vaslav could have lied—it would have been far easier than the truth, but he just wasn’t the type. Or maybe he no longer cared to keep a secret that had been his for far too long.

“They’re my wife’s ashes,” he said when she placed the watering can on the table next to the large pot. He’d already placed the old one to the floor; she could keep it and put it in her shed with the rest of her planting pots, for all he cared.

Vera hadn’t been ready for that admission if the way she froze after the can thunked down to table was any indication. “I’m sorry, what—who?”

He almost smiled.

At least, her confusion was cute.

“My wife. Years ago,” he said as he reached for the bucket at his feet to add a couple of handfuls of soil over top of the very thin layer of ashes around the little lilac bush, “I brought her home a matching sapling—barely a year or two into growing—to go with the ones at the gate. We planted it higher up on the property, closer to the house but it didn’t last the winter.”

He could feel Vera’s gaze on him as he took extra care while he sprinkled in the handfuls of soil and then gently patted it all down. Some people used ashes in their garden for various reasons, but his has always been sentimental, private, and not at all related to the health of the plants.

“As an apology because I had not reacted well to some news she gave me,” he added quieter, “I brought her home the Beauty of Moscow—fitting, for reasons I don’t expect you to understand.”

Vera let out a slow breath, the exhale coming off a little shaky at the end, but she didn’t acknowledge it when she said, “You could tell me why.”

“I could.”

But that wasn’t really important.

“After she was killed,” he said, “that following autumn, and I had her ashes delivered to my home, I didn’t know what to do with them. She should have been buried beside her mother like she wanted to be but after everything ... I couldn’t find a priest that would honor her, and I knew she wouldn’t want to be remembered the way I had found her.”

Finished with packing a half inch, or less, of extra soil into the pot, he finally glanced Vera’s way to find she was still watching him with those wide, blue eyes of hers.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“What on earth for?”

“That someone killed her. That, for whatever reason, you felt you couldn’t give her the final goodbye she might have expected. I can see why that would be ... difficult.”