Part One
The History…
It was as though Elayna had somehow adopted his psychic ability, the way she felt his presence the moment he entered the lounge. “Mihajlo,” she whispered, for she’d never anglicized it into ‘Michael’ like he preferred, tongue instead forming and pronouncing his ethnic name—Mah-hee-lo—the way he would, his exotic accent always making her feel like she’d been pulled into a deep, Slavic fairy-tale forest. Or into an ice crystal schloss hidden in mountains maybe somewhere in Austria. She stared at him, all linen, and cashmere, and tailored perfection, threading his way through this lounge so familiar. A place their spouses knew nothing of.
He sank across from her, golden see-everything eyes unnerving her like always. Arousing her like always—yet tonight clouded with concern. “You sounded so troubled, my milacek.”
‘My love’. “I—” Her nerve fled and scattered her voice into the clink of fine cutlery, drowned it with the soft murmurs of affluent chatter here in this place, their place.
“Elayna?”
How? How to tell him? Her fingers crept to her belly and splayed there as she turned, hair falling into a purposeful curtain that confined all expression.
As if he’d be daunted. He reached out and it was like the electricity between them tenderly lifted her fall of hair from between them. “My love,” he murmured. “Talk to me.”
She drew a breath that shivered in, shuddered out. “I,” she re-began, but her vocal chords tangled. “I,” she choked once more, then gave up and merely opened her palm, connected it to his.
Bewilderment grasped his face, but only for a moment, then he searched. Read. Elayna held her breath as she waited for his familiar look of comprehension and—Oh, God! Oh, no!—joy too, blooming over his face with hectic, high color. “Dite!’” he exclaimed, then grimaced, quickly translated. “A baby?”
She tried pulling away, but his second hand shot out, sandwiched her smaller one between his. “A dcera!” It came out ‘zeera’. “A girl,” he translated once more, laughing. “Elayna—”
“Mihajlo…” She slipped her hand away. “No. Stop. This…I…”
A smile clung to his lips like it was unwilling to go, but then faltered, crumbling as he searched her, palm reflexively opening and closing, wanting to re-establish connection, to read. “You…you don’t want this little dzera?”
Elayna blinked. Not want the baby? The baby was the only thing she knew she wanted for sure. The one person, albeit unformed and still tiny, that she did not have to choose. “Mihajlo, it…she.” In came another big breath. “She might not be our baby.”
He jerked back. Stared.
Elayna studied her hands, willowy fingers twisting this way and that, icy and not seeming to know what to do when he did not hold them. What would she do if Mihajlo did not hold her?
“You…” He still stared. “You let him touch you?”
She yanked her gaze from her fingers. “He is my husband.”
He gaped, the expression making him look so atypically boyish she felt monstrous, and helpless, at once. Mihajlo was supposed to be the strong one—for all of them. Yet…a font of hysterical giggles bubbled in her throat too. That he was the one looking betrayed when for month after month they’d been meeting, touching, practically within the scope of her husband and his wife’s trusting gazes…? “I…,” she swallowed. “I don’t know if it’s his baby, either.” As if that made a difference. Grimacing, she squeezed her eyes shut. “A daughter,” she whispered.
“Dzera,” he re-titled, possessively.
Tears made her blind and she did not resist when he reconnected their palms.
“He…he knows about this baby?”
Yes, and that cut. God, that cut. She couldn’t look at him.
“Does he know she could be mine?”
“No!” A race of heat grabbed her face. “He can’t! Please, milacek—”
“You call me that?”
Yes. She did call him ‘my love’. Just like she called her husband ‘my love’. Her mouth worked and she did search his face then, looking for, hoping for…what? Understanding? Acceptance? God—clemency?
He rose, taciturn. Deliberate. “It appears you have made a decision.”
Had she? Tears crept down her face.
“And yet,” he said softly, “she could be mine.”
“I…I don’t know—"
“Not to worry, Elayna.”
Never—not once—had she heard him sound distant. Or cold.
“My kamarad will make an excellent tatínek.” With perfect posture, he turned.
“Mijahlo—”
“My love,” he said. “Goodbye.”
Elegance. Beauty. Linen and cashmere and champagne kisses, open mouthed with hearts thundering…she felt all of it walk away with him as he smoothly shouldered his way out of the lounge. Their lounge. “Mijhalo. Michael. Milacek.” Her hand rediscovered her belly. “I…I love you both,” she whispered, and a flutter she was certain of responded deep within, butterfly wings buried deep under the spot where her cold fingers splayed.
“Ma’am?” A waiter, face openly concerned, crouched next to her, a napkin tactfully folded in one proffered hand.
“I…I’m fine.” She waved the pristine fabric away, hurriedly opened her purse and rummaged for tissue.
A shoe, one small shoe, was in her bag; pink, trimmed with lace, and scarcely the length of her palm. She drew it out, mouth so dry that the cry she made upon seeing the tiny sole—tinted blood scarlet—was little more than a squeak. A note was with the shoe, attached with pink ribbon threaded through one tiny eyelet. And though the script belonged to no one she knew, what it said made her heart pound, a blood rush in her ears that felt as red as that tiny sole.
Most fairytales end violently. My Milacek
©bonnie randall 2005