Page 50 of Cashmere Cruelty
We sip our tea in comfortable silence. At some point, Elias sighs. “It feels like yesterday that you came to me. A scrawny, scrappy thing with a binder under her arm.”
“You asked for my ID,” I laugh, reminiscing. “You couldn’t believe I was eighteen.”
“Darling, you were skin and bone,” he points out.
Which—fair, I was.Girls who misbehave don’t get to eat dinner,a cruel voice drawls from my memories.They only get to clean it up.
I shake it off. “I didn’t think you’d recognize me, but you did.”
“Child,” Elias laughs, all booming and affectionate, “I’m ashamed it took reading your ID to jog this old man’s memory. You’re the spitting image of her.”
I twist my fingers against the cup. “I doubt it. After all, we weren’t…”
Blood, Matvey’s voice echoes in my thoughts.
But Elias just shakes his head. “Blood isn’t the only thing that binds us,” he says, as if reading my mind. “I can see Maia in everything you do: the way you hold a needle, the Band-Aids on every other finger.” He leans in, whispering mischievously, “The way you scrunch up your face like a li’l bunny when something doesn’t match the idea in your head.” He taps my nose gently as he says this last part, causing the exact scrunched-up face in question. “She might not have been your father’s mother, but she was your grandma in all the ways that counted. And you’reher granddaughter. You’re hers, alright. You’re Maia through and through.”
I force myself to blink away the tears.Goddammit, Elias. Even after all these years…
Even after all these years, he still loves her.
I don’t know the details of their story. Elias never shared the painful bits, and my grandma always got this bittersweet, far-off look in her eye whenever the topic came up. All I have is guesses: wrong place, wrong time, wrong family.
In the end, Maia Toussaint didn’t marry Elias Turner. She married Augustus Flowers, gaining another woman’s son in the process.
And then, eventually, me.
“I don’t know what I would have done without you,” I say. “I mean that. After she died…”
After she died, I was alone. My parents had new families, and I didn’t fit into either one. If you hadn’t been there…
I feel a gentle touch on my hand and I look up. Elias is there, smiling at me like the father I never had—the father I wish I’d had.
But, in a way, I guess I did.
Eventually.
“Maia was the light of my world,” Elias says, his voice just on the wrong side of steady. “And you were the light ofherworld. Now…”
We both glance at my belly.
“Now,” he concludes with a watery smile, “you’re going to meet the light of your world, too.”
We hug goodbye. I’m still fighting the urge not to bawl like a child by the time Elias says, with one foot out the door, “You let me know if you need anything, you hear?” He side-eyes the bodyguards as he says it, which makes me suppress a snort. Eighty-year-old tailor Elias Turner, threatening the Russian mob with a distinct lack of subtlety. “I’ll be here lickety-split.”
I nod, smiling. “Thank you, Elias. Truly.”
I watch his back grow smaller in the corridor. Matvey’s words come back to me:There’s no such thing as family without blood ties.
That may be true for him. But for me,bloodhas never once meantfamily.To me, family is the people I chose. The people who choseme.
Now,I sigh to myself, retreating inside,where do you fit in all that, Matvey Groza?
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APRIL
By the time family dinner comes around, I still haven’t found my answer.