Chapter twelve

Irina tied the belt of her bathrobe as she stepped out of the bathroom. Katya sat cross-legged on the bed, boxes of takeout food spread in front of her. She looked up and smiled, then held open her arms.

"Rishka."

Irina crawled onto the bed, pushing the food to one side, and hugged her sister. She didn't know how long they sat like that; it had been too many years since she'd seen Katya and there was so much she wanted to tell her. But the words wouldn't come, so she just clung to her sister.

"The food is getting cold."

"I'm not hungry." She could smell the spices used to cook, and it made her stomach turn. Jack had given her mostly bland food, and for the first time she'd wondered how he'd known to do that.

She told herself, again, to stop thinking about Jack.

Katya pulled back, holding her at arms' length as she studied her. "You look terrible."

"And you, you're more beautiful than ever." Irina touched Katya's face, then fingered her hair before letting her hands fall to her lap. She felt Katya gently brush her fingers across her scalp.

"Why did they take your hair?"

She shook her head. "They didn't. Jack—"

"Bastard."

"I asked Jack to cut it." She looked away. This was something she couldn't even tell Katya. "It's just hair. It'll grow back eventually."

When Katya spoke again, her voice was bitter. "They told us you were going through extensive debriefs. Seven months – I should have known something was wrong."

"It's over now." Even as she said the words, images sprang to mind: Cuvee's smiling face, hands squeezing her wrists, a bloody sheet . . . She blinked back tears and repeated, "It's over."

"I've made arrangements for you to get out of India," Katya said, speaking gentler than Irina had ever heard her. "I can't come with you. They'll be suspicious if I suddenly disappear."

Irina nodded. "I understand. It was risky of you to even come here—"

"I'll come see you as soon as I can."

Irina looked up, surprised.

"We've got so much to catch up on." Katya smiled briefly, then turned serious again. "Our cousin Andrei left the USSR a few years ago. He has a wine farm in South Africa now. You'll be safe there."

"Thank you."

Katya smiled again, then began clearing up the uneaten food. "You should rest. You've got a long trip ahead of you."

"How are Mama and Papa?"

"Would you believe that little theatre is still going? A new play every few months. I go whenever I can—"

"Katya."

Katya dumped the food in the wastepaper bin and sat on the edge of the bed. "Papa has cancer, Irina. It's – The doctor says he has weeks left."

"Cancer?" Irina looked around the hotel room, seeing nothing. She remembered the last time she'd spoken to her father, three days before she left for her assignment in America.

-- "It's not too late to back out," he says. Irina smiles and hooks her arm through his.

"I don't want to back out, Papa."

He looks down at her; though his face is expressionless, his eyes reveal his thoughts. "Be careful, Irishka."

"I will be, Papa."

"I love you."—

She couldn't remember if she had told him she loved him too. She slipped off the bed. "I have to go to him."

Katya grabbed her shoulders. "Think, Irina. If you set foot back in Moscow they'll just take you straight back to Kashmir."

"But Papa—"

"He would want you to be safe."

"You'll be with him?"

Katya nodded.

"Tell him – tell him . . ."

"He knows, Rishka. He knows."

Irina sank to the floor, all her strength gone. She started speaking – words she never thought she'd say, secrets she'd intended to carry to the grave spilled past her lips. She spoke of Sydney and Jack, and unexpected happiness. She spoke of Kashmir in only the vaguest of details, and of a little girl who'd been born too soon. At the end of it, Katya was on the floor next to her, cradling her like a child, her tears wetting Irina's neck.

Irina fell asleep in her sister's arms, imagining they were girls again and that the shadow of the KGB had not yet touched their lives.