Free The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons

just came back with Tatiana. Brought food.”
    “Really?” Dasha said, her face turning up to Alexander, full of mild curiosity. “How do you know my sister?”
    “I don’t,” said Alexander. “I ran into her on the bus.”
    “You ran into my little sister?” said Dasha. “Incredible! It’s like destiny!” She tweaked him lightly on the arm again.
    “Let’s go sit down,” said Alexander. “I think I will have that drink after all.” He moved to the table in the middle of the room by the wall, while Dasha and Tatiana remained by the door. Dasha leaned over and whispered, “He is the one I told you about!” Dasha must have thought she was whispering.
    “One what?”
    “This morning,” hissed Dasha.
    “This morning?”
    “Why are you being so dumb? He’s the one!”
    Tatiana got it. She hadn’t been dumb. There was no morning. There was only waiting for the bus and meeting Alexander. “Oh,” she said, refusing to allow herself to feel anything. She was too stunned.
    Dasha went to sit in the chair next to him. Glancing sadly at Alexander’s uniformed back, Tatiana went to put the food away.
    “Tanechka,” Mama called after her, “put it away in the right place, not like usual.”
    Tatiana heard Alexander say, “Don’t bother with shots. Pour mine straight into a glass.”
    “Good man,” said Papa, pouring him a glass. “A toast. To new friends.”
    “To new friends,” everyone chimed in.
    Dimitri said, “Tania, come and have a toast with us,” and Tatiana came in, but Papa said, no, Tania was too young to drink, and Dimitri apologized, and Dasha said she would drink for herself
and
her sister, and Papa said like she didn’t already, and everyone laughed except Babushka, who was trying to nap, and Tatiana, who wanted the day to be instantly over.
    From the hallway, as she picked up the crates and carried them one after the other into the kitchen, she heard tidbits of conversation.
    “Work on the fortifications must be speeded up.”
    “Troops must be moved to the frontiers.”
    “Airports must be put in working order. Guns must be installed in forward positions. All of this must go ahead at fever pace.”
    A little later she heard Papa say, “Oh, our Tania works at Kirov. She’s just graduated from school—a year early! She plans to go to Leningrad University next year when she turns eighteen. You’d never know it by looking at her—but she graduated a year early. Did I already say that?”
    Tatiana smiled at her father.
    “I don’t know why she wanted to work at Kirov,” said Mama. “It’s so far, it’s practically outside Leningrad. She can’t take care of herself,” she added.
    “Why
should
she, when you’ve been doing everything for her all her life,” Papa snapped.
    “Tania!” yelled Mama. “Wash our dishes from dinner while you’re out there, won’t you?”
    In the kitchen Tatiana put away all she had bought. As she carried the crates, she would glance into the room to see Alexander’s back. Karelia and the Finns and their borders, and the tanks, and weapons superiority and the treacherous marshy woods where it was so hard to gain ground and the war with Finland of 1940 and…
    She was in the kitchen when Alexander and Dasha and Dimitri came out. Alexander did not look at her. It was as if he were a pipeline full of water, and Dasha had turned the faucet off.
    “Tania, say good-bye,” Dasha said. “They’re going.”
    Tatiana wished she were invisible. “Good-bye,” she said from a distance, wiping her floured hands on her white dress. “Thanks again for your help.”
    Dasha said, holding on to Alexander’s arm, “I’ll walk you out.”
    Dimitri came up to Tatiana and asked if he could call on her again. She may have said yes, she may have nodded. She barely heard him.
    Leveling his eyes on her, Alexander said, “It was nice to meet you, Tatiana.”
    Tatiana may have said, “You, too.” She didn’t think so.
    The three of them went, and Tatiana