Chapter 37 — Katerina

Hours turned into days. Days turned into weeks. The time went by easily enough; I threw myself into wedding planning, reconciling with my brother, becoming more a part of the church I had joined in New York, and the weekly date nights Alexander and I had decided to have. Gradually, we learned things about each other. I discovered who he was, not simply who his trauma had shaped him into. The little things, like his hatred of spinach and preference for broccoli over all other vegetables. Big things, like the fact that he was planning on attending church with his father. My days were spent in such a carefree manner, slipping through my fingers with such ease, that I nearly forgot about everything that had happened to put me in New York, all the drama that had entangled me in this engagement. All the grief, the pain, the lies—it had all been boxed up and put away in some dark corner of my mind.

At least, until today, when I looked at my phone disbelievingly, wishing desperately and futilely that the numbers would change. It couldn't be May 27th. It simply couldn't be. Because if it was May 27th, it was my father's birthday, the first birthday to pass after he had passed. I dropped my phone on the nightstand, standing up out of routine, needing something to do. My hands went busily to rearranging the bedspread, making the bed, tucking the sheets in at the corners. That task was completed all too fast—I needed more. I needed to do something, anything, because if I didn't, if I let myself stop and think for one moment about the date, about where I had been this time last year, I knew I would fall apart, unable to be pieced back together again.

I sucked in a deep breath and forced myself to dwell on those memories anyway. One of the last times my father had been alive and well, happy, before cancer had forced him into the hospital and before I had lost hope in remission, in the chemo, in his recovery. I had thought that being a nurse would help me to fill those empty spaces in my chest that was filled only with a deep ache when I thought of him. I thought having a purpose, helping others when I had been unable to help one of the few people I loved in the world, would help me to recover myself. I had been wrong. Keeping busy and pushing away emotions only worked for so long before those sentiments came flooding back in to drown you.

Silently, stoically, I made myself pray, even though I didn't want to, even though I longed only to wallow in my loss. Thanking God for all that He had given me, asking for His peace and healing to be with me and my brother. Grief wasn't some slow, steady path that you could walk down in stages and hope to eventually get off of. You could be perfectly content one day and inconsolable the next. It was like carrying a weight on your chest that became lighter and then heavier for inexplicable reasons, at random times—an uncontrollable, indefinable burden.

"Trina?" My brother's voice knocked me from my stupor.

I moved like I was on a puppet's strings, my motions as stiff and wooden as a marionette's. Fluffing the pillows one last time before replacing them on the mattress, I stood to greet him. "Morning, George. Tu veux quoi?"

"What do I want?" he repeated as though incredulous. "I want to be there for you, in our shared time of loss. Is that such a crime?"

My brain was too slow for English, too sluggish with sorrow and exhaustion to speak in our second language. I made myself speak it anyways. "Not at all, brother. Not at all."

We sat together in heavy silence for a moment, my head drifting onto his shoulder.

"How are things going with Alexander? I know I was a little harsh the last time we talked, but—" something halfway between a sob and a sigh escaped his lips. "I just feel like you're shutting me out of your life. And I know that I've been the one putting so much distance between us, but I want to change that. I want to be there for you, like a proper older brother. And I can't very well do that if you're constantly pushing me away."

I mulled over his words and found that they did have some ounce of truth in them. "I will try. I am…I am a private person, and you know that. But for you, brother…anything."

He grinned, and I could hear it in his voice when he spoke next. "What did you and Dad do for his birthday last year?"

A sliver of ice slid into my heart, and I curled my fingers into a fist before un-tensing, relaxing against my brother. "We went out for dinner at Légende, and his favourite musical was in town, so we saw that."

His lips quirked into a bigger smile. "Les Miserables?"

Nodding, a lump forming in my throat, I took his proffered hand with a squeeze. "It was good. One of the last good nights we had, before…before he was in l'hôpital."

"Oh, Trina." he rubbed a hand over my hair affectionately. "I remember he called me on his birthday last year."

"Yeah?" I tilted my head up to look at him. "What'd he say?"

His face shifted, features hardening into anger for a moment before shifting back into complacency. "Nothing much. He didn't mention you, and he certainly didn't mention that he was dying. I guess he was too prideful to admit it—or he didn't want to lure me back with the guilt of his death."

"That sounds like him," I replied, fighting back an ill-timed laugh.

He nudged me in the side. "Though…I'm sorry I was away for so long and I'm sorry I've hurt you. Can we start over?"

"Yes," I blurted out, wanting to cling as tightly as possible to the last relative I had left in this world—and to never be apart from my brother again. "But one condition."

He looked bemused, as though he had been expecting those words to come from my mouth. "What is it?"

"Promise me you'll start going to church again."

+

"The food is better than I expected," George grudgingly admitted, stirring the noodles in his Styrofoam takeout box with a pair of wooden, splintery chopsticks.

I allowed myself one smug expression of victory, my chosen assortment of dry and soup dumplings on the table bathing my face in fragrant steam. "I told you so."

He snorted, crossing his legs and adjusting his position on the couch. " What are we, twelve?"

"I wish. Life was a lot simpler then." Picking up my spoon, I lifted one of the xiao long bao to my mouth and nibbled delicately at its wrapper.

"Careful, that'll burn—" George bit off his words with a laugh as I waved cool air onto my scorched tongue.

I glared at him. "That's not funny!" My tongue did hurt.

He rolled his eyes. "Your tongue is fine. Don't be so dramatic."

"I thought you never had this before. How did you know it was going to burn me?" I gulped down my ice water, chilling my tongue.

"I said I'd never had Chinese food in North America. I've had it in Hong Kong," he corrected my assumption.

My heart sank for some reason, at the reminder of how easily he could roll place names off his tongue and name-drop as easily as others breathe. At how easily he could collect stamps on a passport and frequent flier miles like children collecting candy bars.

"Hey, I'm not going anywhere." He met my gaze with his own shadowed one. Secrets I couldn't imagine lay behind those eyes. Yet he was asking me to believe him. "I know it's not fair, but I'm asking you to trust me, and trust that I won't leave."

"I trust you."

Trust. I was doing a lot of that lately. In the end, I would have to see if my trust wound up being shattered or came out stronger.