Daughter from the Dark - Sergey Page 0,106

he stepped through the door.

The key got stuck in the lock. Aspirin jerked it once, then again, almost breaking it.

“She wanted me to tell you that you are acting like an asshole,” Alyona continued evenly. “You should not have written that nonsense about cockroaches.”

“Thanks,” Aspirin hissed.

“In other words, Irina—”

“I got it!”

He slammed the door behind him. Almost immediately the doorbell began to rattle. Aspirin realized the key was still in the lock on the outside.

The now-familiar-to-Aspirin local cop and a perfectly unfamiliar woman stood at the door.

For a few seconds the visitors and Aspirin stared at each other in silence. Then Aspirin reached for the treacherous key and jerked it out of the lock.

“Alexey Igorevich,” the cop began officially, but at that moment the woman sniffled, looking past Aspirin into the depths of his apartment.

“My baby!” she shrieked and, pushing Aspirin out of the way, threw herself at Alyona, taking the girl into her arms. “My sweetheart!”

Alyona neither resisted nor welcomed the embrace. She stood like a statue, slightly recoiling when the crisp black curls touched her face.

Luba Kalchenko had returned from her business trip abroad and discovered that her daughter, Alyona Alexeyevna, had disappeared from her school for an undisclosed location.

The school’s administration had followed the required process, including informing the girl’s guardians and police, and that was when the searching efforts stalled temporarily: the institution where Alyona was registered as a student was not a detective agency, and looking for missing children was not in its line of business.

Very quickly it became known that Alyona Grimalsky left Pervomaysk and now lived with her father, a well-known, wealthy businessman. The school officials secretly rejoiced on the girl’s behalf, but did not call off their missing person report. In any case, neither the police, nor the school had enough money to deport Alyona back to the institute.

Horrified, Luba postponed all her business and personal plans, bought a train ticket, and rushed to rescue her daughter. And now she sat at the table set by Alyona, and there was no end in sight to this unnatural, disturbingly false tea party.

Because none of it was—could be—true.

Right?

The cop had a lot of trouble deciphering the genre of what was happening in front of him: a melodrama? A crime thriller? A bit of science fiction?

Luba dyed her hair the deepest black one could have imagined. Large ringlets adorned her big head, falling to her shoulders. She wore a tight bright red sweater; matching lipstick accentuated her full lips, and her lashes, weighted by a thick layer of mascara, sharply curled up and down so that each eye resembled a Venus flytrap. Aspirin stared at her across the table trying to remember . . . It wasn’t that long ago after all! What was that woman like when they met? He couldn’t have slept with a woman and then forgotten her forever, as if his memory had been erased?

Or could he?

He drank heavily back then . . . but he never drank himself into oblivion. He was easygoing, cheerful, girls followed him around, and he remembered Lena, Vita, Katya . . . But he did not remember Luba. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember her.

Alyona sliced a store-bought cake that happened to be in the bread box. Her face expressed neither joy nor disappointment nor surprise nor fear before her suddenly changing fate. Only concentration like during her violin practice.

How was it even remotely possible, Aspirin thought. The arrival of that Luba put everything in its place. No one fell from the sky in search of one’s errant brother. No one came from a perfect world only to long to return. But what about the bear? The violin? The people he’d seen mesmerized in the underground?

What about the special agents who had come to abduct him?

What about the cockroaches?

He glanced at Mishutka, forgotten on the windowsill. The bear stared up at the ceiling with senseless button eyes. Aspirin rose, intending to call Whiskas.

“Wait,” Alyona said softly. Something in her voice made Aspirin sit back down immediately.

Everyone went quiet. Luba looked at Aspirin. He choked on his tea.

It was obvious that she remembered him well, but her memories were neither warm nor pleasant.

“You’ve gained weight, Alexey. Clearly, you are well off.”

Aspirin stared into kohl-lined eyes and struggled to remember anything at all. That was how people suffering from amnesia must feel.

“Oh well.” Luba got up. “Alyona, pack your stuff, we have to make the train. Tonight we’ll stay at my friend’s, and tomorrow .