Page 77 of The Breath Before Forever

Together.

Some items on the table had tags attached. Others looked like they had been used. Vera suspected someone—probably Vaslav—had been playing in the dirt as a few pots were filled but nothing else.

Did he feel like he needed to wait?

She’d wanted this for him, too.

“He put your lilac thing—the one at your place in the city?—in the back, I guess,” came the familiar voice of Kiril from behind Vera.

She didn’t turn around to face Kiril, not wanting him to see her watery gaze while it took an inventory of everything around her. Maybe her tears came from the sudden swell of happiness at seeing one of her dreams come true, or it could have been the fact that the person she wanted to share it with was not there.

“Lucky I grabbed that for you the week before, huh?” Kiril asked.

Vera let out a slow breath that helped with the shakiness in her voice when she replied, “I hadn’t really thought about the fact that it survived.”

She didn’t tell anyone, really, but Vera had needed to stop thinking about the bomb and her lost villa. Never mind the damage to her neighbors’ homes on either side of hers, or the trauma to an otherwise quiet and safe community. She had to stop obsessing over an event she couldn’t even remember that didn’t entirely feel real.

Maybe once she saw the flattened space where her villa had once stood, that mindset of hers could change. For now, not thinking about it protected Vera in a way she couldn’t explain to the rest of the world, but she wouldn’t apologize for it, either. She had to do what she had to do to get from one day to the next.

“Oh, and the bench came in yesterday for it,” Kiril added.

Vera spun around fast. “What bench?”

Leaning against the wall, Kiril shrugged. “The bench for the lilac in the back. Vas said he ordered it. I don’t know.”

Right.

Kiril only knew what he had been told, and Vera couldn’t expect more from the kid. She didn’t bother to explain her sudden desire to leave as she passed him by to head back down the stairs. Never mind that the bench he mentioned shouldn’t even exist.

Technically.

Vera was supposed to pick one out. Yet another thing her husband had forgotten to mention in her time away that he apparently took control of and handled. Except with this, Vera wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about it.

She’d yet to even see the bench.

Kiril followed behind Vera in silence, but he veered off downstairs to head for the kitchen when Mira called out his name. That was fine. Vera could find the bench all on her own know it was somewhere in the back of the house. She used Vaslav’s den to exit onto the rear porch, and there it sat. Next to Irina’s lilacs in bloom.

Backless and curved, the seat of the bench was carved from a single piece of wood. Where it sat on the ground only a few feet away from the porch’s steps, Vera had a great view of the glossy wood and every grain and color that stretched from one side to the other. It was the cherub, chubby-cheeked with a head of curls and angel wings, branded into the middle of the seat that took her breath away.

Vera took the steps slowly, but she couldn’t look away from the wings of the cherub that wrapped around the infant like it was holding the baby in a cradle. Depicted with closed eyes; eternally sleeping.

Once she was close enough, Vera traced the burned lines in the wood grain that were protected by the glossy finish on top. She asked Vaslav time and time again to let her come home, and his refusals always felt cold and hollow. A part of her thought it was because he didn’t care that she wanted to be home with him, but now Vera wasn’t sure if that was actually the case.

He went on like she was still here.

Never stopped thinking of her.

Like she didn’t even leave.

“Mira said the food’s ready. Did you want to eat out here?”

Vera had heard the sliding doors of Vaslav’s den open, but the sleeping angel took all of her attention for the moment.

“I’ll come inside,” Vera called back.

Kiril didn’t reply, but the door didn’t slide shut, either.

“Where is he? When is he coming home?” she asked.