good way. “The pony was a big hit. And there are bluebirds here now. I’ll put out some nesting boxes in the meadow.”
It was as if I were making small talk at a cocktail party, just delaying the important issue.
I toed a knot in the wood floor. “So, I want to tell you I need to do something. I’m sure you’ll understand. It may not seem too big of a thing to you, but it is to me.”
Tears pooled in my eyes and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep them at bay.
I slipped my rings off my left finger. “Do you remember when you said you wanted to go with me everywhere? I said I wanted that, too, and still do.”
I slid my rings onto my right ring finger.
“But I need to move forward, Henry. Just remember it doesn’t mean I love you less. You are with me always, no matter where I go or with whom. No one can take that away from me.”
I stood for a moment. Had he heard?
I turned and walked to the door as a barn swallow swooped down from the eaves and lighted on the edge of the glass I had set down. He dipped his beak into the golden liquid once, twice, and then flitted off back up to the loft.
Thank you, Henry.
I stepped out of the barn feeling lighter somehow.
On my way back toward the house I stopped to admire the sunset, growing pink and violet over Munger Lane.
From the driveway, Merrill walked toward me, carrying a stack of bushel baskets.
I stepped toward him across the grass, the air at my ankles chilly. “Hello, there, Mr. Merrill.”
Merrill’s smile glowed white in the growing darkness. “Hello Mrs. Ferriday. Just going to pick some apples for the store.”
I reached for one of the baskets. “Let me help.”
We picked apples as the sun went down beyond Caroline’s playhouse, as the meadow turned to gold, and watched the bats fly above the orchard, silhouetted against the pink sky.
Mr. Merrill, Henry, and me.
EPILOGUE
Luba
1921
GIN LANE
People ask me why I came to America with my sister, Sofya, and I tell them for the pistachio ice cream. They laugh at that and I don’t have to think about my parents and everything we left behind.
Life goes on.
Scrumptious little Max, who now answers to Serge, is now Cook’s apprentice and is becoming quite a good little chef, and is going to school here now, at seven he is the tallest in his class. He told his teacher they shouldn’t get too attached to him since he was going back to Russia. Sofya tells that story with a smile on her face but she feels the same way, still has not fully unpacked, expecting “that affair with the Bolsheviks” to be over any day and the Whites to be back in power. But Great Britain just recognized the Reds as the official government of Russia and, if you ask me, the whole thing just gets worse.
As Eliza says, “Heavenly day.”
It must be hard on Sofya that Max looks more like his father every day, his hair no longer blond, but a light cocoa brown. As I write this, she walks the beach looking at the ocean. Thinking of Afon?
She and Cook are doing well, like nervous fourteen-year-olds holding hands sometimes, and she wears the band he gave her. At Peg and Thomas’s wedding he looked at Sofya the whole time and she pretended not to notice.
We’re supposed to call Cook by his real name now, Yury. He’s opening what they call a dinner theater in Quogue. I think Sofya has deep affection for him, but still she has a drawer in her bedroom where she keeps Afon’s photo. She looks at it sometimes.
People say we’re assimilating well, which I think must mean our English is getting better. I work at the hospital here and with my first paycheck bought a True Story magazine, the best textbook to teach myself phrases from toothpaste ads, like What a lovely thing a swift little smile can be, and I learned how important kiss-proof lipstick is. Many Russian girls are here now and I hear talk about building a church we can all go to in Sea Cliff.
Sofya had a row with Eliza after she sold Mother’s emerald necklace. But my sister would not back down. She put the money in the Southampton Bank so I can go to New York University, which she says Mother would have wanted.
We planted Sofya’s rose here