But Alena heard something else in those words. She heard what a quiet inner voice had been telling her for six months, the thing she had worked so hard to drown out. Stumbling over her words, she asked Vera to repeat herself, and her voice came out much sharper than she intended.
The healer said she did not yet know the exact cause, but she was certain the harm was coming to the child through the mother. Alena took it as a personal insult and stepped forward. She demanded that her son be handed back immediately, but Mike caught her firmly by the arm.
Alena said this stranger had no right to accuse her of hurting her own child. Vera answered calmly that being his mother was exactly why she had ended up in this house. The healer remained seated, Arsen in her arms, making no move at all toward the argument gathering force in the room.
The young mother turned to her mother-in-law, looking for support or condemnation—she wasn’t even sure which. Ludmila’s face remained unreadable. Mike finally broke and asked his mother to say something, anything.
Ludmila ignored him and asked Vera directly whether she could help the boy. The healer said she needed time and needed the child with her in order to understand the source of the harm. Looking Alena straight in the eye, she said they should leave the boy there.
Alena stared at her in disbelief, and Mike asked, sounding lost, how long they were talking about. Vera said two weeks, maybe less if things went well. Alena said flatly that this was insane and she was not leaving her little boy with a stranger.
Ludmila cut in, her voice cold and level, and said they were leaving him there. There was no emotion in it, and no explanation. Alena looked at her husband, but Mike dropped his eyes to the floor.
Then she looked back at Vera, where Arsen sat surprisingly calm, studying his own palm with interest. The knit cap slipped off Alena’s finger and landed softly on the wood floor. No one in the room moved to pick it up.
Back home, a wooden pull-toy horse sat in the middle of the empty nursery, going nowhere. Alena picked it up without thinking, spun one squeaky wheel, and set it back down. Then she walked out of the room, only to come back and move the toy closer to the window.
In the house without Arsen, sounds behaved differently. They spread into the corners and disappeared into the oppressive quiet. Alena put a kettle on out of habit, though she had no desire for tea. While the water heated, she wandered pointlessly between the kitchen and the hallway, flinching when the kettle let out its sharp whistle.
Her friend Katya showed up around twelve-thirty carrying a large plaid tote bag with something clinking inside. From the doorway she announced that she had brought a whole pile of things and that Alena was going to accept them without argument. She began unloading the bag onto the table with the efficiency of someone who always had a plan.
Inside were warm meat pies, herbal tea, a bright package of children’s blocks, a bottle of kefir, and a long bottle with a beige label. Katya said she had also brought Alena’s favorite hand cream from an old extra supply she had. Alena turned the bottle in her hands and, without thinking, set it on the shelf above the sink next to a dried-up aloe plant…
