That last night, I stared at the wall through empty red eyes. Mama sat with me, blotting my forehead with a damp cloth and running careworn fingers through my hair. At first she murmured sweet reassurances and empty promises, but eventually words failed her, and she simply wept.
My siblings kept a careful distance, fearful of Papa's wrath. His verdict had been clear: I was a disgrace to our family's name, and no one was to so much as acknowledge my existence any longer. I was allowed just enough time to recover, and then I would be turned out and never allowed to return.
As far as I was concerned, that day couldn't come soon enough. I hated every last one of them for what they'd taken from me. Even Mama, with her gentle hands and apologetic face, she'd let him take her – she'd held me back as I reached for her, begging to hold her, to touch her, just once…
I closed my eyes on tears, trying to picture my baby's face. Those moments were a blur – the last blinding rip of pain, the slippery warm gush of relief as she spilled onto the bed sheets, breathing her first, piercing cry of life.
"Momiche…"
I had barely seen her silhouette, bloody and dusky pink against the wool blanket, before she'd been whisked away into my father's unforgiving arms.
Awash in a fresh wave of grief, I curled in on myself, bringing a hand down to rest on the empty, boggy mound of flesh at my midsection. In that moment, I would have given anything to feel a familiar, reassuring nudge against my palm. She had been my constant companion for months, her little flutters of movement eventually giving way to sharp elbows and insistent little feet. She had the Petrova fire, that much was certain. At times, hunched over with unrelenting sickness, sweating and swollen, hissing in pain at a particularly sharp jab to the bladder, I'd wished the baby dead, the pregnancy miraculously terminated. I never asked for this. I never wanted this.
But now that she was gone, I wanted nothing more than to get her back.
Come first light, I promised myself, I would track her down. I would begin with the most likely suspects – family friends, distant relatives, anyone my father might have turned to in his hour of need to rid him of his unfortunate little problem. There were strings I could pull, bargains I could make. And if all else failed, I would simply take what belonged to me and run like hell. If I had to spirit her away under cover of night, run to the farthest reaches of the earth, so be it. She was my daughter.
I would find her.