“We’re going to that town near the island with the hotel. We’re going to find Sergi and Galina Ogneva.”
“Your grandparents.”
“Yes. I went to Kanistan a few weeks ago. It must have been to see and talk to them. They can tell me about my past and why I visited recently. It’s all I can think to do.”
“If they’re still alive.”
“We’ll take it as it comes. And they must have been alive if I went to see them a few weeks ago.”
“You’re assuming it’s them you went to see.”
“True.” He shrugged. “What other option do I have?”
“None.”
* * *
T
HERE WAS A TENSE MOMENT
when officials perused John’s passport, but no guns were drawn, no handcuffs produced. They both fell into exhausted silence within an hour of taking off out of New York, knowing when they landed they would have lost hours.
It took John longer to fall asleep than it did Paige, and for a while he sat with his head back, studying her as she slept against his shoulder. Even from the angle of slightly above and looking down at her, she was perfect. The sweep of her lashes against her porcelain cheek, the shape of her nose and curve of her lips made him burn with the desire to tilt her face up to his and brush his lips against hers, to feel her closer, in his arms, make her his again, over and over.
How well did he really know her? Was she really over Brian, or was she fooling herself? If she was using him to disconnect with that guy, did it matter? Wasn’t he using her to try to stay sane?
Or was there something more growing between them, and whatever it was could it survive the transformations that would inevitably come when he recovered? One fervent wish: please, let there be no other woman in his life, waiting somewhere to know his fate. It seemed unlikely given what Natalie said about him, but sometimes old girlfriends were the last to know about new ones.
He scrunched down and kissed Paige’s forehead, and she half smiled and made a soft sound that drove his libido straight through the cabin roof. He had to settle for closing his hand over hers. Eventually, he closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep.
And he was walking. It was dark. Then he was in a room and there was a knock on the door and he answered it. A clown stood there, a clown with a big red nose and a blue ruffled collar. A clown with bright yellow shoes, huge shoes! He held a present in his hands, one with bows and ribbons. He gave it to John.
The door slammed. And then the owls came, wings beating. He threw up his arms and the present rose into the air above his head and exploded into a million little stars. He had to run. The owls were coming—
“John!”
The voice was soft but urgent, and he opened his eyes at once. The wings still beat, but Paige was there and she had her arms around him as much as she could given their seating.
He stared into her eyes, and then his gaze shifted to the red line from the chain that had choked her when she pulled it from around her neck. The owl was right there, under her clothes, nestled between her luscious breasts. He touched the old wound gingerly, then slid his fingers down her throat, moving aside the fabric until the gold chain sparkled against her skin....
She caught his hand and held it very tight in hers. She said something, but her voice was just a soft purr, soothing but indistinct.
She pressed her lips to his cheek and he shifted his head so their lips came into contact. He kissed her with all the fire that raged in his body, his hands grasping her closer, desperate to get past her clothes and touch her cool skin and tear away that owl.
With a gentle but firm shove, she pushed him away.
He took a deep breath and swallowed, straightening in his seat as she readjusted her clothes.
He’d been willing to strip her bare on a plane full of people. “You better lock me up,” he muttered.
“I have bigger and better plans for you,” she said with an uneasy smile. “But not until we get a hotel room.” It seemed to him she was trying to make light of something that had alarmed her, and he closed his eyes.
After several seconds of silence, she squeezed his hand and, leaning close, whispered into his ear. “It’s okay, John. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Opening his eyes, he tried a smile. It seemed to crack his face as though he’d never smiled before, and he took another deep breath and nodded.
The steward came around with hot coffee soon after that and then a light breakfast. The images of the dream faded as they always did, but he knew they’d be back.
* * *
U
PON LANDING IN THE LARGE
city of Traterg, they hired a car and driver at the airport to take them to an outlying village over a hundred miles away called Slovo.
It was cold and gray outside, rain turning into sleet as they traveled higher in elevation. John leaned over the seat and talked to the driver in fractured English. The man was young with glossy, curly black hair and bright red suspenders.
As they spoke, Paige sat back. She felt numb from the inside out. And when she tried to figure out exactly how she’d come to be at this place in this time with this man, it left her breathless.
Growing up, her mother had been so flighty and her sister so like her mother that it had fallen to Paige to be the sensible one, and after her father finally got tired of all the drama and left the family, Paige took on his roles, as well. When she was old enough, she drove her sister to and from activities, and did most of the cooking and cleaning because her mother was usually in the middle of a disastrous and time-consuming relationship and otherwise occupied.
Then Paige had left home, gone to school and graduated and proceeded to carve a little place for herself, building up a client base and gaining a good word-of-mouth reputation. The one silly thing she’d done was move into an apartment with her sister upon Katy’s urging, and that had served as a vivid reminder of how chaotic living with one of her family members could be. When Brian and she decided to get married, it had seemed life would now unfold in front of her in a stable, predictable pattern.
Paige sighed as she looked out the window. Common sense said she was being an idiot when it came to John. In her saner moments, she wondered if she found something familiar and kind of oddly safe in the danger that nipped at their heels. Wasn’t this kind of reminiscent of the way she grew up, only with way-higher stakes?
“Dmitry here says the lake we’re going to was carved out of the land when a glacier retreated umpteen years ago and melted ice filled the basin it left behind,” John said. “The hotel is on the island. Slovo is on this side of the lake. He says it’s more like a village than a city.”
“There’s the bridge,” Paige said, leaning forward and gesturing at the green turrets visible through the rain-spattered windows.
And all of a sudden this seemed like the most naive trip in the world to her. This was a holiday destination. What in the world made them think that his grandparents lived here now or ever had? The photo had probably been taken during a vacation.
They arrived in Slovo in the late afternoon when the waning light made the wet cobblestone streets appear like black ice. Across the lake, as viewed through the driving sleet, the island hotel resembled a medieval fortress instead of the ice-crystal castle in the photo Paige had used years before.
“The village seems small enough that someone might know of them,” John said. “I mean I have to assume that when I was here a few weeks ago I knew where to find them. This time I’ll have to search.”
She heard the excitement in his voice and crossed mental fingers that he would find these long-lost grandparents who would fill him in on his missing childhood and explain the visit he’d made earlier that year.
And then that the nightmares would stop. Those were getting a little spooky.
“Let’s start at the post office,” John told Dmitry as they wound their way through the narrow streets.
“Posta?”
“Yes. Please, that would be great.”
“Does any of this look even vaguely familiar?” Paige asked as they parked in front of a modest stone building.
“Not even a little, but what’s new?”
Dmitry went into the post office with them. Two women and one man were busy sorting mail behind a well-worn counter. The small lobby area was empty of customers but looked similar to the old small-town post offices she’d seen in movies.
Leaning against the counter, Dmitry spoke rapidly and with enthusiasm to the man who had come to help. The two women left their tasks and wandered over to listen. “I tell them you are grandson,” Dmitry said in an aside to John. “Looking for the grandma and grandpa. Man say you look familiar.”
John smiled. “Really? Has he seen me before, is that what he means?”
“Yes, yes. Before. Not sure where.”
Everyone nodded and smiled, expressions warm and friendly as they waited expectantly, Paige assumed, for names.
“My grandparents’ last name is Ogneva,” John said. “Sergi and Galina Ogneva.”
One woman’s hand flew to cover her mouth. Her eyes above her knuckles watered. The other one gripped the edge of the counter and swayed on her feet while the man seemed to inhale his smile.
John looked from one of them to the other. “Wait a second, I have a picture of them,” he said, and produced the snapshot taken over two decades before. “That’s me in the middle,” he told them. “I think I lived here years and years ago. With them. With my grandparents.”
Everyone studied the photo but no one said anything.
Dmitry looked at John, shaking his head. “Something is wrong,” he said.
No kidding.
“Can you tell what’s upset them?” Paige asked.
Dmitry spoke to them again. This time the man kept glancing at John, but the women wouldn’t meet his gaze. When Dmitry looked back at John, his eyes were sympathetic. “My friend, John, I have terrible news,” the younger man began. “Grandpa and Grandma die in horrible fire.”
The man behind the counter had more to say and Dmitry listened, translating once he’d finished. “Bullets, too.”
“Bullets. What do you mean?”
“Bullets in bodies. This man say Sergi shoot his wife, set fire to his house and shoot himself. I am sorry.”
John stood there, eyes wide, disbelief shadowing his face. “When did this happen?” he said at last.
Dmitry talked to the postal worker and reported back. “This man knows where he see you now. You were outside house with Galina five weeks ago. He hear you leave for Traterg and the night there be the fire.”
“I can’t believe we came all this way and they’re dead,” John said, looking at Paige, disappointment darkening his eyes.
She gripped his arm. “I know. I’m sorry.”
John addressed Dmitry again. “Find out where the police station is.”
While the conversation continued, Paige walked outside to the sidewalk. Standing close to the building, so the overhang would protect her from the weather, she watched the cars and people hurrying about the end of their day, on their way home, perhaps, or maybe on their way to meet with friends. Ordinary activities, things that made up the bulk of a life. Turning, she glanced inside the post-office window, and for a second John and the others appeared like silent actors on a stage.
What was she doing here?
John turned just then and their gazes locked and she smiled. Poor guy looked miserable and yet he was still concerned about where she’d gone off to and if she was okay. When this situation resolved itself, would she have to get to know a whole new John Cinca? And considering the fact that he’d apparently never recovered from his first bout of amnesia, was it possible he would not recover from this one, either?
Could she live with all the questions?
A minute later, John and Dmitry joined her on the sidewalk.
“Let’s go,” John said, putting his arm around Paige’s shoulders. Dmitry opened the door and they piled inside.
“Where are we going?” Paige asked.
“The police station isn’t far from here we’re told.”
Sure enough, Dmitry dropped them at another stone building a few blocks away, begging off going inside because the man in the post office had told them that there were English-speaking officers here. Paige got the impression Dmitry wasn’t anxious to be around the cops.
The door emptied into a small lobby decorated with two benches, a garbage can and a standing ashtray. Through a glass door, they could see a counter and some more chairs. Several people sat in the chairs.
John held the door open for Paige and they entered to find a woman seated at a desk behind the counter, smoking a cigarette as she pecked away at a computer keyboard with two fingers. She looked up when they approached and rattled off something neither John or Paige could comprehend. The cigarette bobbed up and down as she spoke.
“English?” John asked hopefully.
She got up from the desk, walked to a closed door, knocked once and opened it without waiting. “Irina,” she called. Then she went back to her desk.
A woman in her forties wearing a dark blue uniform emerged from the other room a few moments later. She had very black hair pulled straight back from her face and fastened into a bun at the nape of her neck. Icy blue eyes regarded John and Paige with speculation.
“How can I help you?” she asked in very good English.
John introduced himself and Paige before adding, “I was wondering what you could tell me about Galina and Sergi Ogneva.”
“They are dead,” the woman said.
“I realize that. The man at the post office told me.”
“Why do you want to know about them?”
“I lived with them for several years when I was a boy,” John said.
Irina narrowed her blue eyes and looked at him more closely. “You’re Ivan?”
John looked at Paige. “Ivan?”
“That may be what John translates to here, like in Russian,” she said.
Irina nodded. “That is so.”
“Yes, then I guess I am,” John said. “You knew me back then?”
“Yes,” Irina said, her lips curving into a smile. “Although you’ve changed a lot, of course. I lived two houses away from your grandparents. You don’t remember me, do you?”