Her friend left around eleven that night, giving Alena a tight hug at the door. Alena stood by the window watching the yellow lights go out one by one in the neighboring houses. Over the open fields beyond Rumynovka hung the quiet, piercing cold of an April night.
She picked up the bottle and slowly rubbed another small amount of cream into her tired hands. The familiar motions happened automatically while her thoughts wandered somewhere far away. Outside there was nothing to see but thick darkness and a few dim stars.
Ludmila had never been able to tolerate inaction and always preferred to solve problems quickly. After returning from Vera’s, she spent exactly twenty minutes drinking tea in her own kitchen and thinking things through. Then she put on her jacket and went out to check a new theory.
Nina lived two houses down, and the old fence between their properties had been a source of friction for years. Lately Nina had been acting suspicious, always looking away when they crossed paths. Ludmila rang her bell under the pretense of asking to borrow some good cucumber seeds.
Nina held the door with the uncertain grip of someone who had not yet decided whether to let a visitor in. The entryway smelled strongly of onions and pharmacy valerian drops. Ludmila’s sharp eye immediately caught several dark medicine bottles standing on a shelf near the door.
The conversation about seeds lasted only as long as it needed to before shifting to the real subject. Nina answered briefly and kept wiping her hands on her apron, telegraphing her nerves. When Ludmila mentioned little Arsen’s illness, Nina stopped breathing for a split second.
Nina quickly started talking too fast, saying she had not noticed anything suspicious, while looking very much like a woman in a panic. Ludmila left convinced the neighbor was hiding something. In Ludmila’s ironclad logic, looking guilty was nearly the same thing as being guilty.
What Ludmila did not know was that Nina had been secretly taking strong sedatives for eight months after her husband’s death. Those were the bottles on the shelf in the dark entryway. That private sorrow had absolutely nothing to do with Arsen’s condition.
Zinaida Pavlovna ran a cramped drugstore on Main Street that always smelled faintly of cheap plastic. She sold pills, bandages, bug spray, and questionable cosmetics with handwritten price tags. Ludmila walked in and immediately began asking about body lotions…
