“Yes. It will show the degree of kinship. If I am really your mother’s sister—and I am—the test will confirm it. We will be linked as aunt and niece. It’s a scientific fact. It can’t be faked.”
Dasha thought about it. A test. Proof. Something objective, something she could believe in a world where everyone around her seemed to do nothing but lie.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
“Of course. Take your time.” Natalya finished her coffee and looked at her watch. “I have to go. But, Dasha…”
She took a notepad from her bag, wrote something down, and handed the piece of paper to the girl.
“This is the address of the apartment I’m renting. If you want to come over, talk some more—come anytime. I work from home, I’m almost always there.”
Dasha took the paper. The address was nearby, a few bus stops away.
“Thank you,” she said. “For telling me.”
“Thank you for listening.”
Natalya stood up, put on her coat, and was already heading for the exit when Dasha called out to her:
“Natalya!”
The woman turned around.
“You said you did a genetic test when you found information about Mom. But Mom was already dead by then. Where did you get her… sample?”
Natalya froze. A strange expression flickered across her face—just for a moment, but Dasha caught it.
“That’s… a difficult question,” she said slowly. “I’ll answer it. But not now. When you’re ready to hear it.”
And she left, leaving Dasha alone with her cold cocoa, a piece of paper in her hand, and new questions, even more than before.
The rain intensified. Dasha sat in the café for another half hour, watching the wet street through the fogged-up window. Her thoughts were a jumble, crashing into each other, making it impossible to focus. A genetic test. A DNA sample. Mom died two years ago. How could Natalya have gotten her genetic material? Dug up the grave? Absurd. Found something at the hospital? Unlikely. Or… or was she not telling the truth?
Dasha shook her head, pushing the doubts away. No. She couldn’t think like that. Natalya didn’t seem like a liar. Her pain was real, her story plausible. And that resemblance to Mom… You couldn’t fake that.
She paid and went outside. The rain beat against her face in small, cold drops. She didn’t have an umbrella; she’d forgotten it at home, as usual. Dasha pulled up her hood and ran to the bus stop, jumping over puddles.
A surprise awaited her at home. Her father was sitting in the kitchen. Not sleeping, not looking at his phone—sitting and waiting. When Dasha entered, he looked up, and she saw his face: gray, haggard, with dark circles under his eyes. Had he aged so much in these two years, or had she just not noticed before? Gray at his temples, deep wrinkles on his forehead, the extinguished gaze of a man who had long since stopped seeing meaning in anything.
“Dad!” She froze in the kitchen doorway, wet and cold. “Why are you home so early? I thought you were at work until evening.”
“I took time off.” He pointed to the chair opposite him. “Sit down. We need to talk.”
His voice was strange. Not the empty, detached tone Dasha had gotten used to over the past two years. Something alive was breaking through the usual armor, and that something scared her more than the silence. She sat down without taking off her jacket. Drops of water dripped from her hood onto the floor, but neither she nor her father cared.
“Grandma called,” he said. “She told me about the woman. About Natalya.”
Dasha was silent. Waiting.
“Is it true? You met with her?”
“Yes.”
Her father closed his eyes. For a moment, it seemed like he was about to cry—for the first time in two years, for the first time since the funeral. But he just took a deep breath and looked at his daughter again.
“Dasha, I have to tell you something. Something I’ve kept quiet about for a very long time. Too long.”
The kitchen seemed smaller than usual. The walls felt like they were closing in, the ceiling lowering, and the air grew thick, heavy. Dasha looked at her father and didn’t recognize him. For two years, she had been used to seeing the empty shell of a man who existed mechanically, eating, sleeping, going to work, but had long since stopped truly living. Now, a different person sat before her. Frightened. Guilty. Alive.
“What do you want to say, Dad?”
Alexander Terekhov rubbed his face with his hands—a gesture Dasha remembered from her childhood. He did that when he didn’t know how to start a difficult conversation. When he had to explain why her goldfish had died. When he had to tell her that Mom was sick. When he had to find words for the impossible.
“I knew,” he said at last. “I knew about Natalya. That your mother had a twin sister.”
Dasha felt the floor give way beneath her. Grandma Zina—fine. Grandma had always been distant, remote, hard to understand. But Dad… Dad, who loved Mom more than life. Dad, who always said there were no secrets between them.
“How?” Her voice came out hoarse, foreign. “How did you know?”
“From Grandma. She told me before the wedding. She said Raya had let it slip, that Olya wasn’t her biological daughter, that there was a sister somewhere. I…” He faltered. “I should have told Olya. I should have. But Grandma convinced me it would destroy her. That Olya was too fragile, too sensitive. That the truth would hurt her, and a lie would protect her. And I… I listened.”
“You lied to her for fifteen years.”
“I kept silent. It’s not the same thing.”
“It is the same thing!” Dasha jumped up, knocking her chair back. “Keeping silent when you should speak—that is a lie! You stole her chance to find her sister. You stole their chance to be together!”
“Dasha, please, sit down. I’m not finished.”
Something in his voice made her fall silent. Something dark, heavy, frightening. She slowly sank back into the chair, her eyes fixed on her father.
“Natalya came to us,” he said. “Three years ago. A year before your mother… before she got sick.”
The world stopped. Dasha could hear the clock ticking on the wall, the drip of water from the faucet, a car honking somewhere outside. But it was all distant, unreal, as if happening in another universe.
“What?” she whispered. “Wait. That’s impossible.”
“Why is it impossible?”
