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Call My Name

Summary:

After the events at St. Basil’s, Rose Hathaway had to make one of the biggest decisions of her life — comply with Lissa’s wishes and return to Court, a get-out-of-jail free card to ending her assignment early, or go against orders and stay in Russia in order to follow her heart. Having chosen the latter, Rose now faces a host of challenges she hadn’t anticipated upon arriving in Baia months ago, including the problems she must contend with as a result of having chosen love over duty.

And everyone remembers that Rose is only on assignment as punishment for what happened to Victor Dashkov…well, everyone except for Rose herself.

Notes:

This is the sequel to 'Let Me Show You'. That is essential reading if you want to know what's going on!

Chapter 1: Chapter One

Chapter Text

And we're back with the second official installment of this verse! Given that I'm still working on getting my health in order, I'm not going to commit to updating on a specific day of the week — rather, my goal is to simply post once a week since I've got a good chunk of this fic already on (virtual) paper.

I also have another, totally unrelated fic coming out about this time next month, so if you're into both Romitri and the Olympics... Stay tuned for that. ;)

This is the sequel to Let Me Show You. You will be completely lost if you haven't read that already.


The fanfare of worried hugs and concerned how-are-you's from the Belikovs was just as big as Rose had expected, and between reassuring everyone half a dozen times that she was fine and trying to keep up with the family's usual rapid-fire banter, Rose was worn out before Olena had finished making tea for everyone.

"I'm just going to take it with me to bed," Rose said, gently taking a full mug in her good hand. At Olena's wary look, Rose added, "I'll be fine. I didn't sleep on the trip here, so I'm really tired."

Dimitri's hand brushed hers when she moved past him down the table to leave. "Do you need help?"

"I've got my mother," she replied quietly, glancing to the doorway where Janine stood, looking as uncomfortable as she had when they'd arrived not ten minutes earlier. "I think she could use a break."

Upstairs, Rose set her mug down on top of Dimitri's dresser and then sank onto the bed with a wince. It took her a moment to notice that her mother was still hovering near the door, taking in the room — both bedside tables clearly being used by two different people, the mix of clean clothing sitting in a basket by the closet waiting to be hung up.

"It's not—we're sharing out of necessary. It's a small house for…" Rose squinted as she did a quick count in her head, trying not to let her anxiety at her mother's amused look take over her. "There's eleven people living here and Viktoria already—"

"I'm not accusing you of anything, Rose," Janine said, her tone surprisingly soft. Her ghost of a smile faded away. "Just… observing things is all."

Rose's shoulders sank with relief. She'd been starting to feel like a thirteen-year-old defending a crush.

"You're close to them," Janine said, finally entering the room and leaning back against the wall in front of Rose, arms crossed over her chest. "All of them," she corrected.

Raising her eyebrows, Rose twisted slowly to reach for the small suitcase behind her. Alex had been kind enough to not stack Dimitri's duffel on top of it when he'd brought their luggage in earlier, she noticed.

"I've been living with them for a while," Rose said, shrugging her uninjured shoulder as she pulled out a fresh t-shirt and leggings from her luggage. "You've met Olena. It'd be hard to not respond to her mothering."

"I have." Janine stood straight, trying to appear tall despite the slightly remorseful look on her face. "I'm…sorry…that you never got that from me."

Rose's fingers froze at the hem of the leggings she currently wore. They'd had several difficult conversations over the years in the slow rebuilding of their relationship, but never before had her mother directly apologized to her.

"You did what you had to do," Rose said, trying to play off her surprise nonchalantly as she worked the cotton down and off her legs, one-handed and without standing up. "No matter how I've felt about that growing up, I've at least always understood it."

Janine looked like she wanted to say something but instead batted Rose's hand away and finished pulling off her leggings for her. "Even if you didn't…You wouldn't be alone. It's rare, but sometimes I wonder if I made the right call with you, if I should've been in your life more." She reached for the clean leggings, and Rose leaned on her mother's shoulder to stand up long enough to help get them on over her feet. "I don't know what the answer is, but I'm glad that you've had a little bit of experience in regards to having a family."

Rose had started easing off her cuff sling as Janine spoke, and she gestured with it for her mother to take when she pulled it from around her neck. "I'm not going to lie and say I never resented having to always pretend Lissa's family was my own." She winced at having to lift up her arm the slightest bit to let her mother pull her shirt off. "We both — shit, ow, that hurts — we both know that's why I stopped visiting on school breaks when I was younger." A breath of relief when the new shirt was slipped up her arm and she could plaster it back against her side. "But I wouldn't trade the last few years I've had with you for anything or anyone else."

Janine looked like she didn't fully believe Rose. "You've never wanted a mother like—"

"Olena's great," Rose said, easily jumping on the train of thought. "And it's nice to be around her, but she's not my mother." She tugged her shirt down in the back, meeting Janine's look. "You are. You're the one who set the example for me—thanks." She took the two pills her mother held out to her and dry swallowed them. "I've always strived to be half the guardian you are because if I at least did that much, I'll feel like I accomplished something."

"I haven't always made the best decisions," Janine said with a small, rueful smile.

With a wince, Rose rewrapped the cuff sling to her wrist and then ducked her head under the strap. "Nobody's perfect. But you're my mother and I wouldn't want anyone else to fill that spot."

Janine nodded, about to reply when she caught sight of something. "That's quite the necklace."

"What—oh." Rose glanced down. She'd absent-mindedly been fiddling with the necklace Dimitri had given her for Epiphany; he'd returned it to her earlier in the day when she was being discharged. "Yeah, it is," she said, flushing a little.

"I stand by what I said the other day, about emotions interfering with what we do," Janine said. There was a cautious warmth about her that made Rose pay attention. "But on the other hand, I get it. I've been in love before. If you do it right, it can be one of the best experiences of your life. I'm just worried about…external influences getting in the way of your happiness."

"I'm not in love," Rose argued as Dimitri's words from the night before echoed through her mind. Let me show you how much I love you. "I mean, there's feelings. A lot of them. But I don't think I'm in love."

Janine's smile turned knowing and grew a little. "If you say so. But I'm serious, Rose. Be happy. You seem to be safe here. Indulge as much as you can while you're out here, because when you leave and go back to Court and your friends, it's going to be difficult to maintain whatever is going on between you and Guardian Belikov."

"You can call him Dimitri, Mom, it's not a crime or anything." She squeezed the rose charm between her fingers. "I know. I'm not thinking about it right now. I'm trying this new thing where I stop worrying about everything that could go wrong and just let myself live in the moment."

"Good. I don't know when you got so serious, and while I think it's done wonders for your maturity, I also think it's tamped down what always made you stand out from everyone else." Janine's expression grew thoughtful as her eyes stayed glued to the necklace rolling between Rose's fingers. "Your recklessness and wild spirit were stressful while you were growing up, but I never wanted it to completely disappear. All you'd have of your father then is the physical resemblance."

There was so much her mother admitted to that Rose's head started spinning. Heart-to-hearts weren't rare between them… but they weren't common either, and they always left Rose off-kilter with a new way of looking at her life.

The part about Janine not knowing when Rose turned from motivated novice to seriously dedicated guardian-in-training was a lie — Mason was really more of a best friend than a boyfriend to Rose, but he'd been by her side almost as long as Lissa and his death had really done a number on her. But Rose appreciated her mother glossing over that. Losing someone important to her and then almost losing another person just as special in a similar fashion were two things she wanted to focus on putting behind her.

Nodding slowly, Rose said, "Yeah, I've noticed. I'm trying to find a balance between the two. I don't want to completely let go of my commitments, but I can't keep up this workaholic pace I've been at since I graduated either."

"That's adulthood. You're…well, I don't want to say young. But you are only twenty-three. You'll keep growing through the rest of your twenties. You won't really have it a lot of this figured out for a while. And even then, none of us really know what we're doing anyway."

Rose grinned. "Thanks, Mom. That's comforting. I look forward to a lifetime of wondering what the fuck I'm doing. Totally makes me feel like I've got my life under control."

Janine laughed, loud and bright. "You really are Ibrahim's daughter, my God." Her smile was big and she squeezed the back of Rose's neck affectionately. "You look exhausted."

The name rung a bell, but her body sank at her mother's assessment. Suddenly, sleep sounded like heaven. "Yeah, I am."

"I'll let you get some rest, then." She made to leave and paused at the door. "No matter who you are or what you do…I'm so proud of you, Rose. I hope you know that."

Rose nodded. "I do, Mom."

"Good." She gave Rose a brief smile and left, Dimitri entering moments afterward as Rose was pushing the blankets back to slip underneath.

"Everything alright?" he asked, face clouding when Rose tried to lean back against her pillows and jostled her shoulder in the process, her face screwed up with pain.

"I would be if this country let me have something stronger than glorified Advil," she complained. "Seriously, comrade, what the hell kind of government lists Benadryl as a classified substance?"

"I meant with your mother," he said, with a hint of a smile.

"Oh, me and my mom? Yeah, we're all good. We occasionally have these spontaneous bonding sessions. We see each other so rarely that when they happen, they get pretty deep, but we're trying to be closer, so I'll take it."

"You've mentioned that," he replied, sliding in next to her. She immediately folded down into his arms and he tucked her head under his chin. "That's good. I'm glad. You get really bitter when you talk about the way you were raised."

"We talked about that," she said, snuggling deeper into him when he started running his fingers through her hair. "Or, my mom did, and I mostly just reassured her that I didn't grow up hating her existence."

"She did?"

"Mhm. I think she was caught off guard by the fact that I'm not just some guest staying here, that your family treats me like your own. I don't think she really thought about it until it was right in front of her."

"That's because you're one of us. Laugh all you want, but it's true. If my mother puts you on the dish rotation, that's it. You're done. You can't escape. She'll be expecting you for the holidays every year now."

Rose was full-on laughing, her face buried in his chest. "That sounds like such a problem," she drawled, biting her lip as she sobered up. "No, my mom just wanted to make sure that I wasn't, like, secretly wishing I'd been raised by your mother or anything. Which, don't get me wrong, I love your mother—"

"I know what you're saying," Dimitri said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "They're two very different women who led two very different lives. It's incomparable."

"Yeah." Beat. "Oh. I just had a thought."

"How likely am I going to want to run in the opposite direction if I hear it?"

"I don't know. Did you see the way they greeted each other like they'd already met before?"

"Yeah?"

"Then how's this for a terrifying thought: What if our mothers became best friends?"

Dimitri groaned. "Go to sleep, Roza."


Her perfectly dreamless sleep was interrupted by a familiar pair of jade green eyes.

"Rose!" Lissa exclaimed, throwing her arms around her friend's neck.

Trying not to stagger backward, Rose clutched back at Lissa, grateful her injuries hadn't carried over into whoever's spirit dream this was. "Shit, Lissa, don't kill me. I'm right here, alive and well."

"Good," came a second voice and Lissa let go of Rose long enough to let Adrian get in a hug. "I'm not ready for your funeral just yet, little dhampir."

"Who's dream is this?" Rose asked when she pulled away from Adrian. She gave Lissa a hard look. "You're still on your meds, right?"

"Of course." Lissa almost looked offended at the accusation. "This is all Adrian. I've just been worried enough about you that he offered to pull me along."

"That's an awful lot of spirit for someone who's supposedly on new meds," Rose said, her eyes narrowed at Adrian now. He held his hands up.

"The latest stuff is taking a while to build up. I'm taking advantage of it while I can."

"Hans told me you asked to stay on your assignment," Lissa said, cutting off Rose before she could start an argument.

"I did," Rose said, "And look even if I'd wanted to come back, I would've stayed through at least getting my cast off. I wasn't going to be on the first plane home like Eddie and Sydney." To Adrian, she asked, "Did they get back okay?" and he nodded.

"Wanted to come back?" Lissa echoed, disbelief splashed across her face. This time she did actually look a little hurt.

"I mean—" She pushed her thoughts about Dimitri to the side and focused on how to word her answer so that Lissa didn't take it the wrong way. This wasn't the time for Rose to admit that the biggest reason she was staying was because she wanted to see where her feelings for Dimitri would take her… only, she was beginning to selfish for doing so now that she was face-to-face with her best friend. "I have a job here, Lissa, one you gave me. I want to see it through to completion."

Lissa nodded, seeming to take the excuse for what it was. "I heard from Eddie that you suffered a concussion and broke your shoulder and wrist?"

"Yeah." Rose rolled what was her bad wrist outside the dream. She couldn't wait for it to fully heal, and it hadn't even been a week. "And then, you know, just general soreness from being tossed into a tree." She didn't mention being slowly choked out. It didn't seem like Lissa knew about that and besides, there was enough worry streaming across the bond.

"Okay. I mean, not okay, but you know…" Lissa gave a small smile. "I'm just relieved you're alive. We lost two dozen guardians despite having some preparation on our side."

"Yeah, well, you should see the other guys," Rose quipped in an attempt to cover up her unease at the number. Nobody had given her hard numbers, just that there'd been an equal number of casualties on both sides with varying degrees of injury among the survivors. Two dozen guardians, though…that was a lot of lives lost.

Lissa's image shifted as she rolled her eyes. "You're clearly fine. I hate to leave you, but my wedding planner is sending me off Court to find a dress since apparently I'm the pickiest bride in the history of forever." Her irritated look told Rose legions. "And I have to be up in daylight for that, so I gotta go."

"No worries," Rose said, a pang of sadness shooting through her at not being able to be by Lissa's side while dress shopping. It was something they'd talked about growing up, and Rose was giving it up to stay in Russia.

You can't have it all, Rose, she told herself.

She pulled Lissa in for a long, tight hug, and then let her shimmer away.

"You've been quiet," Rose noted, turning to a thus far silent Adrian.

"Watching your aura," he said, still staring at the space next to her. It was like he was looking at a photo slightly off-center. "It was glowing until you lied through your teeth about wanting to finish your assignment, and now that I bring that up, it's dimmed again. So spill, Rose. What gives?"

She shook her head. If one person knew, that was one too many. "No idea what you're talking about." Damn, you can't even tell a bad lie well.

"Rose," Adrian said, firm but warm. "You don't lie to Lissa unless you've got a good reason. I'm just trying to make sure you're not accidentally starting World War Three here."

Silence. Someone had picked the living room of Rose's apartment at Court for the backdrop and instead of looking at Adrian or giving him a response, she folded herself up in her big plush armchair, letting its impressiveness swallow her up.

"You're not coming home because you met someone," Adrian guessed and Rose's head shot up. He laughed. "You're not as subtle as you think, little dhampir."

"I'm torn," she said, wrapping her arms around her legs.

He sat down on the large footstool in front of her. "How so?"

"Because I feel selfish!" she burst out. Once she'd come to realize exactly how she felt weeks ago, it'd been eating away at her until someone who wasn't involved had finally asked. "I should be protecting Lissa, I should be back at Court, I should want to be back at Court, but I'm not. I mean, on a logical level, I know it's good for me to do something I want because I'm well aware I haven't done anything for myself in a very long time… I guess breaking twenty-three years of social conditioning is easier said than done."

"I believe it," Adrian said. "I'm still struggling with my mental health. I slip a lot. My self-esteem is about as positive as a Fox News morning talk show."

Something like a laugh coughed out of Rose's throat.

"If you want my opinion—"

"I do."

"—I think you're making the right decision. You can't be Lissa's guardian if you've killed yourself from not taking care of your personal needs. There's dedicated and then there's obsessed, and I see the latter in you more often than you think."

She wanted to say she wasn't obsessed, that it was a problem of identity — who was she outside of Guardian Hathaway, the Not Quite Yet Personal Guardian of the Queen? — but something kept her mouth shut.

"Who is it, anyway?"

"Dimitri Belikov."

Adrian's eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. "Aren't you staying with the Belikov family, too?"

"Therein lies my problem," she said with a pointed look.

He was clearly impressed at that. "That explains everything about your aura, then."

"I'm really not going to miss that about you," Rose said, half-serious. "It's really annoying having other people tell you what you're feeling."

"I'm just a nosy little shit," Adrian said with a grin. "You like this guy?"

"Didn't we just establish that you know my emotions better than I do right now?"

"Yeah, well, I want to hear you say it."

Rose sucked in her lips, thinning them out to nothing as she considered her feelings. After a good minute, she looked up from her hands, nodding slowly. "Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"God, Dad, I like him, okay?" Rose playfully shoved Adrian's knee with one of her feet, flashing a mocking smile.

"Good. That's good. I'm glad." He was looking at her fondly, nothing more than a man happy for his close friend. "You deserve it. You've been through enough bullshit for a lifetime. Does he make you happy?"

"That's a stupid question. Of course he does. You can see that."

"I'm just making sure." He leaned back to stretch his arms above his head. "Gotta brush up on my intimidating older brother routine for when I meet him."

"Good luck with that. He's a six-foot-seven guardian with enough muscle to knock down a small building in one swing."

Adrian pretended to look mildly cowed. "That's impressive. Where'd you find him?"

"I almost kicked him in the face in his kitchen at one in the morning."

"Only you, Rose," Adrian laughed. The dream began to go fuzzy and Adrian knocked a knuckle against her foot. "You're waking up, so I'll catch you later."


"…and then he had the gall to look at me like I was crazy," Janine was saying when Rose and Dimitri entered the kitchen after Paul made his round of calling everyone to dinner, "Like I was the one who had nearly killed everyone by driving head-on into the caravan."

Olena pressed a hand to her mouth, trying to suppress her laughter as she stirred a large pot on the stove. "He didn't."

"He did." Janine was sitting at the table. She shook her head, auburn curls bouncing around her face. "I nearly kicked him out of the car. I didn't know where we were, but I was ready to drive back to Cairo myself if only so I didn't have to put up with him anymore."

Somewhere in the handful of hours that Rose and Dimitri napped, Rose's terrifying vision of the future was quickly realized, resulting in Janine and Olena laughing and talking like they'd known each other for years. On the surface, Janine appeared at ease with everything, but Rose could see a thin edge of wariness lining her movements that kept her from fully relaxing into the conversation. Considering the rhetoric Rose had heard Janine repeat about dhampir women staying home to raise their children, it was a huge leap forward for her mother in Rose's mind.

"I regret ever letting this happen," she whispered to Dimitri where they'd stopped short in the kitchen doorway.

"You really need to stop thinking," he muttered back. "Dangerous things happen when you do."

"Yeah," Rose said when the women across the room burst into laughter over something to do with camels spitting on men who got what they deserved. "Consider my brain turned off, now and forever."


"What a sorry sight you both are," Alex called out from the waiting car as Rose and Dimitri exited the house the following morning. "I hope whoever did this to you is well and dead."

"I stabbed him a couple times just to make sure," Dimitri deadpanned back, and Rose barked out a laugh so hard, she tripped over her own feet. "Easy there, wildcat," he said, grabbing her upper arm to keep her from faceplanting into the front yard.

"Wildcat, huh?" she asked, darting a glance at him, and he gave one of his private, easy smiles that said she was the brightest thing in his universe.

"I'm going to need to ask the chemist for something for this toothache I have just watching you two," Alex said, unlocking the car — Dimitri's, Rose fleetingly noted — and opening a

backseat door for Rose. "It's kind of disgusting."

"Yeah, and so is watching you and Karolina bicker over flower arrangements," Rose replied, sliding in behind the driver's seat.

"She has a point," Dimitri said, making a face as he slid in next to Rose.

"You'd be just as into it if it were you getting married, Mitya, don't pretend like you're better than us," Alex replied lightheartedly as he put the car in drive and pulled out onto the road.

"We're talking about you," Rose countered, mindful of her shoulder when she leaned forward and trying her best to ignore the image of standing next to Dimitri at a wedding altar that her brain insisted on lingering on.

"Yeah, because if I get married, it's not going to be any time soon," Dimitri countered.

"Whoever said that?" Rose asked without thinking, still stuck on her earlier thought.

Dimitri twisted in his seat enough to look at her, eyes blazing with questions.

"Like I said," Alex said, glancing at the two of them and then back to the road as he turned onto a different street. "Tooth. Fucking. Ache."


The pharmacist had promised them a half hour wait time to get their loads of prescriptions filled since the hospital in Omsk had only given them so many pills, not wanting to be liable for handing off full bottles of painkillers, and there was a unanimous decision to kill time in a coffee shop just down the street.

Most things about Russia had become familiar to Rose by that point — the never-ending love affair with cabbage; the way most people ignored the country-wide indoor smoking bans; women stubbornly insisting on walking in six-inch heels, even if there was a foot of snow on the ground — so she was only really taken aback by the country's drug laws because so much else was normal to her by then.

Rose was stirring milk into her tea when Alex swore pretty intensely under his breath in Russian. "Hey, Rose, isn't that your mom?"

"How many gingers do you know?" Rose asked with a pointed look. Her eyes slipped past Dimitri to where Alex was staring in confusion and her bravado dropped. She was sitting across from a man whose back was towards them, enraptured by whatever her companion was talking about. A flash of gold when he tilted his head gave him away. "Is that Zmey?"

Dimitri's head whipped around. All three were openly staring.

"How do they even know each other?" Alex asked and Rose's eyes narrowed when her mother let out a loud laugh, her head tilting back and her body sinking into the chair. However they knew each other, Rose had never seen her mother so relaxed.

"That's—" Something clicked and if Rose had been holding something, it would've shattered on the ground from her dropping it. "No, oh my God, this cannot be happening."

"Rose?" Dimitri asked, turning to her. Alex glanced at her and then did a double take at whatever expression was on her face.

She was shaking her head furiously, diving for her phone. It clattered to the table and she started tapping away furiously. A few moments later, she flipped it around and slid it towards the two guys.

"It's a name etymology page for 'Abe'," Dimitri said, his confusion deepening.

"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock," Rose said, nerves shooting through the roof. "Read it." When they got to the bottom of the screen and looked up, Rose was chewing on her thumbnail. "All I know about my father," she said slowly, eyes fixed on the couple across the cafe, "Is that he's Turkish and I've heard enough people drop the name to believe his name is Ibrahim."

"Holy shit," Alex breathed and Dimitri's expression mirrored his future brother-in-law's words.

"I'm not, I can't be," Rose rambled, covering her face with her free hand as though it might hide the scene in front of her. "Shit. I'm, like, Zmeyette. Zmey Junior. Someone save me from this nightmare." A nervous bubble of laughter escaped her throat.

"That would actually…explain a lot," Dimitri murmured and when Rose and Alex turned their confusion on him, he nodded. "The first time Zmey…Rose's father…Abe showed up, I was four. They had just started pulling down the wall and there was an influx of foreigners showing up. Moroi men. He was poking around, trying to find a way to my grandmother without just walking up to the front door. It was summer — I remember being forced into endless doll weddings at the hand of Karo. She's evil, by the way," he digressed to Rose. "Don't let her nurturing motherly persona fool you. That woman put me through the ringer as a child." He shook his head.

"Anyway, Yeva had said the winter before that someone important would be visiting soon, so when rumors started of a Moroi man who was looking for my grandmother but had clearly stated he wasn't there for the all the usual reasons, she let him find his way to her. My mother was skeptical, but she didn't say anything after my grandmother said her dream about a Middle Eastern man was about to be realized."

"What happened?" Rose asked, invested in the story.

Dimitri shrugged. "This is what I've pieced together over the years, so I'm not quite sure. I don't know why my grandmother was a person of interest to him; she refuses to tell the reason to anyone. He found her eventually, though, at the bank, I think, back when she was still doing things beyond gossiping with her friends and predicting the end of the world." He smiled at Rose's snort.

"My mother distracted my sisters and me in her bedroom while the two of them talked in the kitchen for hours. I know he identifies as a businessman, but doing what is a mystery to me. Lots of illegal things, I know that much. My grandmother's always very quiet about when and why he shows up. My mother eventually came into knowing that information, after my father…."

Rose reached to link her fingers with his.

"When things would get rough with money," Dimitri continued, "He'd step in and give us some help. I discovered that on accident when I was fifteen. I was pissed when I found out, but my grandmother maintained that he was important to the family and said it was in my best interest to stay in his good graces. I never understood why until today," he finished, looking over his shoulder and squeezing Rose's hand.

Janine and Abe were still talking, completely absorbed in their own world. It would be cute if Rose wasn't so unsettled by either of them showing emotion that wasn't cool detachment from everything around them.

"A name and his ethnicity is all you knew about your father?" Alex asked. Rose nodded.

"My senior year, my mom gave me a nazar for Christmas. It's supposedly this protection thing. Looks like a necklace with a blue eye pendant thing. She kind of hinted later that my father had given it to her, but she's always been very quiet about him. If it is Zmey, I can understand why." She paused, considering even bringing up her next words. "She mentioned being in love once, which, just, again, if it is Zmey, Mom, what the fuck," Rose whispered softly.

"Sounds like your mother's lived quite a life," Dimitri said.

Shaking her head, Rose said, "My mother was twenty when I was born. I can't imagine Abe's all that much older than her. How did they meet? Where did they meet? I really can't picture her having some wild affair in Istanbul at nineteen."

Dimitri was looking at her the way he had in the car earlier, his face that of a man who had a thousand questions and a thousand more things to say in response.

"Well," Alex said, checking the time on his phone, "If you're done with your tea, we can run as far away from this mess as we can and go get your painkillers."

Rose took two long gulps, fingers barely grasping the handle, and set the mug down on the table with a little too much force. "Alright, let's blow this popsicle stand."

"What the hell does that mean?" Alex asked as they stood.

"It means something along the lines of 'let's leave'," Dimitri guessed. His eyes were narrowed and he looked at Rose questioningly. "Right?"

She laughed, pushing the door open with her good shoulder. "One day I'll teach you guys the inner workings of American slang so you can keep up."

Alex shook his head as Dimitri relinked his fingers with Rose's and none of them saw the look of panic on Janine and Abe's faces as they finally noticed their daughter in a place where she could've easily seen them.