Why does she have to be so fucking beautiful?
She should come with a warning: Nearness may cause distractibility and lapses in judgment. Proceed with Caution.
We settle back into the sitting room and she takes me up on the drink offer when I tell her I have some cans of premixed cocktails, thus there’s no need to drink until we’re stupid. But as the first drinks go down and we move on to the second, it occurs to me that if there’s one person in this world who I want to get drunk with, it’s Petra. She’s both easy to talk to and incredibly guarded. I’ve only ever seen her drink one time, and I am curious if she’s the same happy, bubbly drunk who will tell you anything like she was back then.
After two drinks, she’s not even a little tipsy. Instead, she drills into me like I’m on trial and she’s leading the prosecution.
“You damn well should have told me everything upfront,” she says. “Niko’s child, Aleksandr? How could you not mention that he’d died, and he left behind a child you were responsible for? Why would you not mention that?” She emphasizes a different word in each sentence and slaps her hand against the metal arm of the chair she’s sitting in with each one.
She’s shed her coat and sits there in a sleeveless black turtleneck that does way too much to emphasize the curve of her breasts above her tiny waist. Do not look at her boobs, I have to remind myself. I’d forgotten about these internal dialogues I require when I’m around Petra. I’d thought that fourteen years of distance and aging would have dulled the inappropriate attraction I’d felt toward her back then. Instead, it’s not only still there, but my reasons for keeping her at a distance back then seem less important now that we’re both adults. Except you know a truth about her family that even she doesn’t know—and it’s one she could never forgive you for.
It’s a hurdle in our relationship I’ll never be able to get around.
“Honestly, almost no one knows about Stella. Somehow, Tom managed to keep the news of Niko and Colette’s death and my application for guardianship out of the papers.”
“Why are you trying to keep her a secret?” she asks, her brows raised as she fiddles with the metal tab on top of the can and awaits my answer.
“I’m not trying to keep her a secret. I just don’t want to flaunt her in the face of Colette’s sister and her husband,” I say. “They filed for guardianship of Stella at the same time I did, even though the will named me as guardian and Colette’s best friend Sofia as backup guardian. Colette’s sister, CeCe, was not only not mentioned in the will, but Niko and Colette met with both me and Sofia separately when they created their will a couple years ago to emphasize how imperative it was that CeCe and her husband never get custody of Stella.”
She leans forward in the chair, sizing me up. “So the court gave you guardianship in accordance with the will, and now you need citizenship because you’re afraid . . .?” She trails off, but I don’t jump in with a response. Instead, I wait to see if she’ll come to the same conclusion I have. “You’re afraid that if something happens to you, they’ll give guardianship to Stella’s aunt because she’s next of kin?”
“Exactly. Even though the will named Sofia as the backup guardian in case I wasn’t able, I’m worried that keeping Stella with family will override her dead parents’ wishes. I can’t adopt her unless I’m a US citizen, but if I was able to adopt her, I could create a new will that echoes her parents’ wishes of naming Sofia as Stella’s guardian if anything should happen to me. With two wills saying the same thing, I imagine the court would side with Sofia, no matter how much money Stella’s aunt and uncle were willing to spend to litigate this.”
“Why are you worried that something will happen to you?”
“Accidents happen. I travel a lot for hockey. What if something happened to me while I was gone? What if I hit my head so hard in a game that I was incapacitated as a result? Failing to prepare for these possibilities is the epitome of bad parenting,” I say, as if I have any idea what good parenting looks like. Luckily, I have Sofia to guide me, and I can take everything I experienced from my own father and flip it, doing the opposite as he would have done.
“Okay, so it makes sense to prepare. But I still can’t believe you brought me to New York just to lie to me. That you’ve known we were married for months and you didn’t tell me sooner. That you were just trying to use me to get what you wanted.”
The hurt in her voice twists the guilt into a knot in my stomach, especially since I still haven’t told her a crucial piece of information—that I found out about the marriage contract right after we signed it. I thought I’d taken care of the issue back then, only to find out that my father lied to me when he said he would make sure it didn’t go through. But I can’t tell her that—ever. There are too many family secrets locked into that story, and knowing any of them would inevitably cause her more pain, with nothing to gain from the knowledge.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, but I am very protective of Stella. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe, happy, and healthy.”
“But how in the world did you think that I wouldn’t find out about her?”
“I didn’t think. I listened to Tom’s advice even when I didn’t agree with it,” I shrug. I understand why Tom thinks the less Petra knows, the better. But I don’t know why I thought for a second that she’d show up and sign the paperwork, going along with his plan without knowing everything, then just head back to her life in Park City.
“I guess I still don’t understand why you can’t just apply for citizenship the normal way. Why do you need to be fake married to me to make it happen?”
“Because I haven’t been a permanent resident for five years.”
“How’s that possible? You’ve lived here for eight, right?”
“Yes, but for tax reasons, I didn’t apply for permanent residency until last year, when I bought this place. If I could go back and trade a few years of higher taxes for permanent resident status so I could apply for citizenship now, I’d pay it tenfold. But I can’t. So I’d have to wait four more years before I could apply.” I paused, letting her absorb this. “But if I can prove we’re already married and that we’ve lived together, even off and on, for three years, I’d be free to apply for citizenship immediately.”
“How in the world would we prove that? I haven’t been back to New York since I moved to Park City more than three years ago. You haven’t been to Park City, that I know of. How would we possibly make it look like we lived together during that time?”
“I think there are ways—”
“Yeah,” she interrupts. “That involve lying to the federal government. No thanks.”
“Petra, we’d only move forward if we were sure we had a convincing story. But you are my last hope. I can’t let any more time go by without being able to adopt Stella.”
“I don’t even know what would happen if we were caught lying to the government about this, Sasha. Federal prison? For sure, you’d lose guardianship and be sent back to Austria, at the minimum. I’m not sure it’s worth that risk.” She leans forward and sets her drink on the table. “This is a lot to think about. I should head back to the hotel.”
“Wait.” The word is out of my mouth before I can stop it, and she looks at me with a small degree of surprise. “I never got the chance to talk to you about the event I’m hoping you can plan.”
“There’s actually an event? That wasn’t just a ploy to get me here and spring a fake marriage on me?”
I may have created an event just so this whole interaction, this transaction, isn’t so one-sided. But now that she’s here, I find I want to keep her near me as long as possible. Some things haven’t changed—will probably never change.
“I’m hoping you can plan an end of season event for my team in a month. Whether we win or lose in the playoffs, I’d like to have one last get together with them.”
“Wait, so you really are planning to retire?”
“Not exactly. My contract is up, and I’m not sure if I’ll stay in New York or end up somewhere else. My agent is still working on that.” In fact, James is getting offers left and right. But New York is refusing to negotiate until after the playoffs are over, undoubtedly to see if I can lead the team to another Stanley Cup. If I can, the offer will be more competitive.
“Okay. Why don’t you send me an email with all the details and I’ll start looking into it. But be forewarned, the options for what I can pull together in that time frame are going to be very limited.” She slides her jacket on and stands.
There’s nothing else I can say to keep her here without sounding desperate. So as much as I want her to stay, I have to let her go—for now.
“But you said I could bring a friend,” Stella says as she pushes her lunch plate away from her. She has a distinctly pissed-off look that I didn’t know someone her age could have already mastered.
“I meant Harper, or another friend from school.”
“But I want to bring Petra.” Stella’s lower lip trembles and I know she’s about to lose it.
“Sweetie, Petra isn’t your friend,” I say the words kindly to soften the blow. “She’s someone I was friends with back when I was a kid.”
“She’s my friend now. She tucked me into bed last night. You wouldn’t let someone tuck me into bed if they weren’t a friend, would you?”
It’s hard to argue with her logic, and yet Petra is not her friend. “I’m not calling Petra and inviting her to go to the Orchid Show with no notice, in the middle of the day when she’s probably working.”
“We won’t know if she’s working unless we call and ask,” Stella says.
I put both my hands on the small table and level my glare at her. “I’m not calling her.”
“I’ll call her,” Stella says and holds out her hand for my phone.
“I don’t think we should interrupt her while she’s working.”
Stella’s arm is still extended, waiting for me to place my phone in her hand. “If she can’t go, she’ll tell us.”
“There is no us. If you’re going to ask her, you tell her you wanted her to come. Don’t say anything about me.”
“Okay,” she says, calling my bluff. The girl has the confidence of a twenty-six-year-old who knows exactly who she is and how to get what she wants. It makes parenting her extremely difficult at times, but I never want her to lose that spark.
I pull up Petra’s contact on my phone and hand it to Stella. She doesn’t even hesitate for a second before she hits the icon to place the call. I watch her expressive face, noting the way she raises her eyebrows every time the phone rings, like she just knows this is the ring where Petra will answer. Finally, on the fourth ring, her patience is rewarded.
“Hello?” Petra’s low, throaty voice carries across the table to me, even though Stella’s holding the phone up to her ear.
“Hi, Petra, it’s Stella. Stella Ivanova,” she adds, in case Petra couldn’t figure out which Stella might be calling her from my number.
“Hello, Stella. What’s up?” I can’t tell if her voice is amused that a six-year-old is calling her, or concerned.
“Dyadya is taking me to the New York Orchid Show this afternoon, and he said I could bring a friend. Will you come with me?”
Petra’s laugh is low and throaty, just like her voice. “Don’t you have school today?”
“Yes, but we got out early because the teachers have a meeting.”
Early release days at Stella’s private school mean the kids are out before lunch, which begs the question, why even go in at all?
“Okay, can I talk to your uncle about these plans?”
“So you’ll come?” In her excitement, Stella’s voice sounds like the high-pitched scream of a teakettle.
“I will if the timing works. That’s why I need to talk about the details with your uncle.”
With a victorious look, Stella hands me the phone.
“Hi.”
“You know,” she says, “if you’d wanted me to come, you could have asked me yourself. You don’t need to have the kid do your dirty work for you.”
I reward her flirtation with a chuckle. “She is very insistent that you are the friend she wants to bring. I tried to tell her you were probably working.”
“I just wrapped up a conference call with my team. And the only thing I planned to work on this afternoon is scouting a location for your post-season party. So it’s your choice, I can work on your event, or I can go look at flowers with you and Stella.”
I glance at Stella’s hopeful face, and there’s only one answer. “Flowers it is.”
“I have dinner plans with my friend Emily tonight. Will we be back in time?”
“Yeah, definitely. We actually have to be back by six anyway.”
“Plenty of time, then,” she agrees. I doubt her dinner plans are before eight or nine. Mine never were back when I was childless.
“We’re leaving in an hour. Where should we pick you up?”
“I’ll be back at the hotel, which is perfect, by the way. Who do I have to thank for that? You?”
“Indirectly, yes. Tom’s assistant Avery made the arrangements, though.”
“Ah,” Petra says, but doesn’t elaborate. “I’ll see you in an hour, then.”
As I hang up and see the triumphant look on Stella’s face, I can’t help but feel like we both just got played by a kid.
“Of course not,” Petra laughs. I’m not even sure what Stella asked her. I’m too focused on the way they are walking in sync, each holding an ice cream with one hand while their free hands are linked together. I’m trailing behind them, irrelevant to their conversation. It’s been like this since the moment we got here. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Stella this relaxed and happy.
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. As a teenager, Petra was open and honest. She didn’t hold her punches, either—she had a way of knowing what advice people needed to hear and when they needed to hear it, and she delivered it whether you were ready or not. I loved that about her, but I think it could rub some people the wrong way. Not Stella, though. She’s clearly enamored.
Petra looks back over her shoulder and winks at me. I step closer so I can figure out what they’re talking about.
“So if I can’t punch him, what can I do instead?” Stella asks.
“Okay, so here’s what I’d do,” Petra replies. “I’d say ‘Jason, if you’re so desperate to be around me, maybe try being nice for a change.’”
Ah, Jason. Stella’s nemesis. I’ve unsuccessfully been coaching her on how to deal with the daily conflict he brings into her life. And Petra’s advice sounds pretty good to me too.
“But he’ll just say ‘I don’t want to be around you!’” Stella counters.
“So then you just say ‘The feeling is mutual. So go away already!’”
“What’s mutual mean?” Stella asks, looking up at her as she licks her ice cream cone. Her dark brown curls frame her face and hang past her shoulders, and in that moment it looks like a six-year-old version of Petra standing with the adult version. I’d never noticed how much she resembles Petra at that age. Hell, I only ever focused on teenage Petra. I almost forgot she was a little girl who grew up on a country estate with three older boys, and that Victor, Niko, and I wanted nothing to do with her back then.
“Um,” Petra stalls as she tries to think of a way to explain mutual. “It means you both feel the same way. So instead you could say ‘I don’t want to be around you either, so go away!’”
“Okay,” Stella says, “I’ll try that. Dyadya keeps telling me that Jason is just being mean because he likes me.”
The look Petra shoots over her shoulder this time is decidedly less friendly.
“He might be right,” she tells Stella, “but you need to stand up for yourself and teach him that you won’t be treated like that. Boys need to learn more appropriate ways to get girls’ attention than tormenting them.”
“I think so too.” Stella beams up at Petra. Oh good, her feminist training begins now. Petra could teach Stella a thing or two about resilience too.
Stella stops to look up at the arch of orchids we’re walking through on our way toward the exit. “I want orchids like this in my bedroom,” Stella says.
“While that would be beautiful,” I speak up from behind them, “it is also impractical. Orchids don’t grow in arches like this naturally. This is a thousand plants together, carefully tended by master gardeners.”
“What if I just got a few plants?” she asks.
“I don’t think there’s time to stop at the Botanical Store on the way out, but maybe another time,” I tell her.
By the way Stella frowns, I’m afraid we’re heading for an argument. Stopping at any museum gift store as you leave is a must with kids, but we really don’t have time if we’re going to make it back into the city for her piano lesson. Instead, Petra distracts her with some questions about school and we make it out of the Botanical Gardens without an issue.
In the car, we all sit in the back seat as my driver, Daniel, navigates us through stop-and-go traffic. I glance at my watch, wondering if the rush hour traffic will result in her missing her lesson. Again. For the third week in a row.
“We aren’t having dinner with Aunt CeCe and Uncle Tony tonight, right?” Stella asks, looking up at me from her booster seat between Petra and me. I see the worry etched there and my heart constricts. The thought of her ever ending up with people she so clearly doesn’t feel comfortable around is the main driver of my determination to adopt her.
“No, that’s tomorrow night,” I tell her.
“Hey,” Petra says softly as she rests her hand on Stella’s knee and gives it a little squeeze. “Why aren’t you excited to see your aunt and uncle?”
I’ve never asked Stella that question. I’ve never wanted to be the one to pit her against the other side of her family.
“They just make me feel . . . icky,” Stella says.
“Icky?” Petra asks.
“Yeah. I just don’t like being around them. I don’t like when they come over for dinner.”
Petra looks at me, her eyes opening wide and her eyebrows raising. I give her a small shrug in return, because I don’t know what Stella means any more than she does.
“They can’t be that bad,” Petra says. She’s not dismissing Stella’s comment, she’s clearly trying to get her to better explain the issue.
“Can you come to dinner tomorrow night too?” Stella asks. “Then you can see what I mean.”
Petra stills. Across the back seat of the car I watch her placid face, wondering what’s going on beneath the surface.
“It’s probably a good idea for you to meet them and see what we’re up against,” I suggest.
She glances over at me, and in her eyes I can see the push and pull—not wanting to get involved, but already involved nonetheless.
“Okay,” she says.
“Thank you!” Stella says, launching herself at Petra as much as her seatbelt will allow. Stella wraps her arms around Petra’s waist, and though she looks a little uncomfortable with the affection, Petra lifts her arm and wraps it around Stella’s back, holding my niece to her side.
“Six thirty tomorrow night, my place,” I tell her.
She closes her eyes and gives me a quick nod. I wish I could read her thoughts. How does she feel about getting involved in my niece’s life like this? And most importantly, is she willing to help me get citizenship so I can adopt Stella? She’ll give me those answers when she’s good and ready, but for the first time, it occurs to me that the wait might damn near kill me.
