Twenty years later“I’m nearly forty, you know,” I tell Nicolai. I’m staring at myself in the mirror before me, frowning. “Almost an old lady.”
He scoffs. “Forty is the new thirty.”
He was forty over a decade ago and insists that age is just a number. I don’t much care myself, though it’s remarkable to me how far we’ve come. Our oldest son is a sophomore in college, and our daughter is a senior in high school. Nicolai has taken on the role of pakhan. Though Stefan is still youthful and of completely sound mind, he no longer wanted to bear the weight of brotherhood leadership. Nicolai volunteered. It’s time.
I touch the few grays at my temple and stare at the laugh lines around my eyes. My cheeks are fuller, my body curvier, and there are traces of silvery stretch marks in places hidden under my dress. It’s late fall in Atlanta, the weather slightly cooler. I take my book and I head to the porch. I look up when the door opens behind me. Nicolai follows.
I smile at him and slide onto the porch swing. He sits down beside me, and pulls me onto his lap.
“I’ll squash you!” I protest, more than a little self-conscious about the extra few pounds I’ve gained in the past few years. With a growl, he turns me over and slaps my ass, hard.
“Ow!”
“Don’t let me hear a word about your curves,” he says warningly, every bit the dominant caveman he was decades ago. “I love those curves. I love everything about you.”
I kinda melt into him a bit more.
The porch door swings open again, and our daughter Fiona joins us on the porch.
“Boys are idiots,” she pronounces, flouncing onto the white wicker chair that sits across from us.
“Oh?” I ask, eyeing Nicolai. He’s stiffened, his eyes narrowing.
“Relax,” I tell him.
“Please, dad,” Fiona says. “You don’t have to start polishing your rifle.”
Nicolai doesn’t own a rifle. He does, however, own a veritable arsenal of weapons he has readily at his disposal, and Fiona well knows this.
“I’ve been good to your boyfriends,” Nicolai protests. “I haven’t broken a single bone.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yet.”
“Oh, Fiona,” I say. “He won’t.” But I’m not so sure he wouldn’t if one of them mistreated her.
“You know,” she says wistfully. “I just want what you two have. None of my friends’ parents have been married for twenty years. You guys are so into each other it almost makes me sick.” But she smiles. “And I want that.”
Nicolai looks at her gravely. “You deserve that,” he responds.
She gets to her feet with a smile and trots down the stairs, waving over her shoulder when her friend pulls up to the curb. One would think we were an almost normal family, if they didn’t see the black car that follows her friend when they leave, or the trademark Bratva ink.
“You know,” I say teasingly. “I wouldn’t worry so much about the boys pursuing her. Remember, she isn’t into boys so much.” I chew my lip thoughtfully. “It’s her bodyguard I’d keep an eye on.”
I laugh out loud when he sits up so straight I nearly topple off the porch swing.
“I’m teasing,” I tell him. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure he’s gay.”
His eyes crinkle around the edges and he pulls me closer before he bends down and kisses me.
“I’m feeling wistful tonight,” he says. It was twenty years ago we said our vows, on a night just like this. I look up at him and rest my hand on the side of his face. Though he’s aged, sporting salt and pepper in his beard that wasn’t there before, his eyes are as blue as they were the day I met him.
“Oh?” I ask. I rest my head in his lap and sigh into him when he pulls me even closer.
“You are still my precious star,” he says, holding my hand to his chest. “Zvezda moya. All this… our home, our children, your love… what you’ve given me is beyond the worth of a thousand kingdoms. Priceless.”
Zvezda moya.
I’m his star, his light in a world of darkness, and I will shine on.