Home > The Bookstore on the Beach(6)

The Bookstore on the Beach(6)
Author: Brenda Novak

   Taylor could tell by the tone of Mimi’s voice that this wasn’t a casual question. “I couldn’t tell you. She doesn’t talk to us about how she’s feeling.”

   “Because she doesn’t want to make what you’re going through any worse,” Mimi explained, always quick to defend her daughter.

   Caden came to the surface, threw back his hair and went under again.

   “I think Mom’s decided Dad’s not coming back,” Taylor admitted.

   Mary blinked several times before speaking. “Do you think he might?”

   Taylor’s chest suddenly felt as though it was buried beneath a thousand pounds of sand. “No,” she admitted for the first time and ran down to the water.

 

* * *

 

   Mr. Olynyk had a thick accent, making it hard for Autumn to understand him. She’d spoken to him many times since she’d hired him over a year ago, before she went to Ukraine. But it’d been months since he’d had anything of substance to report. Although he claimed he was working with various contacts inside the SBU, the Security Service of Ukraine, she was beginning to suspect that whatever he could do had already been done. So many people—from various governmental agencies, as well as chat rooms and forums she’d visited while trying to get help online—had warned her about her vulnerability and how easy it would be for an unscrupulous person to take advantage of her. After all, how would she know if he was telling the truth?

   Now that she was no longer in the country, she felt so out of touch, so helpless. But she couldn’t go back. It had been hard to leave her children, who each went to stay with a friend while she was gone so they could continue going to school. Not only had those three weeks seemed interminable, she also hadn’t accomplished anything. She had a face to put with Mr. Olynyk’s name and had spent some time with him. But that certainly didn’t stop her from lying awake at night, imagining that he’d proved Nick was dead months ago but had decided not to say anything.

   Meanwhile, she couldn’t tell her children what’d happened to their father, and she couldn’t bring Nick’s body home, where she could give him a proper burial and be satisfied that, even though his life was over, she’d done everything she could. While she hoped that he was alive and would come back to her, if they found him dead, that would at least put an end to the questions that nearly drove her mad. Not knowing when to quit, when she’d fulfilled her duty to the love they’d shared, was one of the worst parts of what she was going through.

   “Say that again?” she said, when Olynyk mentioned something about the Donetsk region, which was held by separatists.

   “A friend of the man I told you about last time, Ananiy Kushnir, recognized your husband’s photograph. He believes he saw him.”

   She clutched the phone tighter. It was dangerous to get her hopes up. How many times had she been through this? But she craved news of her husband so badly she simply couldn’t avoid taking the bait. “How long ago?”

   “Months. Many months. Nick was in the company of known rebel forces.”

   “You think he came to your country to infiltrate the separatists.” This was a theory they’d floated before, but there’d never been anything to suggest it was actually true.

   “Possibly.”

   He’d called her in the middle of what would be his night to tell her this? Apparently, she’d imbued his timing with more meaning than she should have, because this sounded like more of nothing to her.

   “You want me to keep going, yes?”

   That was his way of asking if he should spend more time. And more time meant more money. Should she continue with this? Was he on the right trail, or was this “friend” fictitious?

   “What could’ve happened to him?” she asked for the millionth time. This was always how their conversations went—she pummeled him with questions and he danced around in his efforts to answer them.

   “He could be working somewhere. I am looking. But it’s very dangerous. The Russian government has sent many sabotage groups—you understand? Sabotage is the correct word?”

   “Yes. I know what that means.”

   “These groups, they work...um...how do you say...independent.”

   “Independently,” she said.

   “Very dangerous,” he repeated. “Maybe...maybe they don’t like your husband.”

   “Are you suggesting that Nick might’ve become a target of one of these Russian groups?”

   “Could be. If they deem him an enemy, they could...do anything,” he finished weakly.

   Had they murdered him? It sounded like something out of a movie, not her life.

   She gripped the railing as she sank down onto the wooden steps. “Can I ask you something?”

   “Of course.”

   She let every bit of the longing she felt fill her voice. “In your honest opinion, do you believe Nick’s dead?”

   He hesitated as though uncomfortable with the question. Then he said, “I think...yes. Otherwise, I find him long time ago.”

   It was one thing for her to say Nick was most likely dead. It was another thing entirely to hear it from someone who knew the area and the situation far better than she did. This one response sounded completely frank—so frank that along with all the other emotions zipping around inside her, she felt a degree of guilt for suspecting Olynyk of trying to cheat her. Maybe she just hadn’t asked the right questions.

   “Where could his body be?”

   “Anywhere. But you want me to keep trying to find it, yes?”

   Squeezing her eyes closed, she let her head fall back. Now they were searching for a body?

   God, what should she do?

   Tears trickled from her eyes and rolled back into her hair while she struggled to decide. For the most part, she’d quit weeping at random moments. Having Nick gone had become normal. What was new was the realization that she’d come to the end of the road. It was time to give up no matter how difficult it was to let him go.

   She thought of those rain boots in the corner upstairs. The fact that he would probably never come back to wear them made it almost impossible to speak. “I’ll send you another two thousand. That should take you through June. But if you can’t provide something concrete by then—something that shows you’re on the right trail—that will be the end of it. Do you understand?”

   “Tak.”

   After the past eighteen months, she’d learned enough Ukrainian to know that meant yes. She also knew how to say thank you: “Dyakuyu tobi.”

   “Nemae problem.”

   No problem. She shook her head as she disconnected, but another call came in before she could finish going down the stairs. It was her mother.

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