Lights All Night Long - Lydia Fitzpatrick Page 0,118

in America.

“Ilya,” she said, “please tell me.”

But Vladimir had not known how much Dmitri loved Maria Mikhailovna; Dmitri never would have kept Ilya from coming to America because that was what she wanted. That December night in their apartment, Ilya remembered thinking that the Malikovs’ love had been palpable, strong enough to change the quality of the light, the air. And then, after Dmitri had chased Vladimir with his car, he had asked Ilya not to tell her. He had said that she was too good for this world. He was right, and Ilya knew that if there was anyone who could hold Dmitri accountable, it was her.

He told her. About the tape that Vladimir had made and about how Gabe had found Lana and about how Dmitri had driven Gabe to the airport and told him never to come back.

“Are you saying he killed them? The girls? I was with him the night Lana died. I’m sure of it—if it was the night before the boards. There has to be another explanation.” Her voice was incredulous, defensive, but not scared, not yet. She didn’t know what came next, and he hated her for that in the same way that he hated Lana in that picture in the Tower, the assumption in Lana’s pursed lips, her angry eyes, that life would continue as it always had.

“I have the tape,” he said. “I could send it to the TV stations.”

“To the—” She made this small, choking sound. She understood now. Now she was scared.

Once, when Ilya was eleven or twelve, Babushka had called Maria Mikhailovna a saint. His mother usually resisted Babushka’s effusions, especially those of a religious nature, but in this case, she’d agreed, and agreement between them was like a warm, cloudless day in Berlozhniki—rare—and Ilya had soaked it up, thinking, She isn’t just a saint, she’s mine. My saint.

He said, “If anything happens to Vladimir, it’ll be on every news channel, in every paper in America. Tell him that.”

She was quiet for a long moment, and Ilya felt, suddenly, the distance between them: the thousands of miles of line slicing the sky and sea. Then she said, softly, “But you haven’t done that yet?”

“No,” he said. “I wanted to give you a chance—to give him a chance—to get Vladimir out.”

“Then I guess I should thank you for that,” she said, and she hung up, and he felt like he might vomit.

It was nighttime in Berlozhniki, and he could see her standing at that enormous window. She was tiny against the inky darkness pressing at that one, perfect pane. He could see her, banging a fist against the glass. It didn’t break. It wouldn’t break no matter how hard she hit it. The night Ilya had come for dinner, Dmitri had told him that the window was reinforced, bulletproof, that nothing could shatter it, not ever.

* * *

—

Ilya found Sadie up at the track. Practice was over, or at least she was the only one still there, crouched in the blocks on the far straightaway. She didn’t see him at first. Her eyes were on the spot where the track started to curve. She hit a button on her watch. Raz, dva, tri, he counted, and she started to run.

He’d only ever known Sadie to move with a nonchalance that was almost lazy—even when they were together in the back of her car—but as he watched her now, the laziness fell away and the nonchalance too, and there was a naked urgency there. Pure want, he thought, or maybe pure fear, and he wondered if Lana had had a chance to run the night she’d been killed and whether her eyes had looked like Sadie’s did, like they wanted to leave her body behind.

She slowed when she saw him and lifted a hand.

“Is it good or bad?” she said. She put her hands on her hips and hung her head for a second to catch her breath.

“Both,” Ilya said. And as they walked around the track, he told her about the confession, and that he’d called Maria Mikhailovna.

“And what will she do?” Sadie said when he’d finished.

“She’ll get him out,” he said.

Sadie shook her head. “What if you’d never listened to them?”

“I know,” Ilya said. He’d imagined the tapes still sitting in their plastic bag in the Tower; he’d imagined them stolen in transit, just as the batteries had been; he’d imagined the redheaded nurse dropping them into a trash can; or Gabe searching the bag for drugs and,