The man inside was alive.
His eyes were open. His mouth worked desperately for air like a fish thrown onto shore. Dark suit, expensive. Tie pulled crooked. Gray at the temples. A broad face, blotchy and strained. He tried to sit up and couldn’t. His body wouldn’t cooperate.
“Easy, easy,” Marina said, not even sure why she said it. “Just breathe.” The man breathed. Ragged, harsh, whistling breaths.
He smelled not of damp earth but of expensive cologne, sharp and clean, mixed with something chemical, something medical. “What’s your name?” Marina asked. He said nothing at first, then forced out one word.
“Water.” She had a half-liter bottle filled from the cemetery spigot out by the gate. She held it to his lips.
He drank greedily, choking on it, water running down his chin onto his white shirt. “Are you Tarasevich?” Marina asked, nodding toward the plaque. The man looked at her.
His eyes were cloudy, but he understood. “Gregory,” he said. “Gregory. I need to, I have to…” he whispered, and then he passed out.
The abandoned house on the edge of town where Marina lived had once been a small family home, maybe even a summer place years ago: two stories, a porch, and a yard. Now the yard was down to three apple trees and a patch of wild rosebushes, the porch was rotting, and the second floor had a hole in the ceiling covered with plastic sheeting. But the first floor was still standing.
The wood stove worked, the windows were intact, and the door still latched. Marina had found the place three months earlier when she was walking with Annie in her arms and noticed a gap in the fence off an alley. She climbed through, looked around, and stayed.
She got Gregory there in the stroller. It sounds crazy, but he was light for a man his size, all skin and bone, like he’d been sick a long time. She laid him on a mattress, covered him with a blanket, and tucked her jacket under his head.
By morning he was awake. He sat up, looked around, saw Annie asleep in a cardboard TV box lined with old blankets. “Your baby?” he asked quietly.
