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Yuna walked into the cemetery like a woman on a mission. She kept her head down and her stride purposeful. She’d already memorized the route she needed to take, poring over the map Sveta texted her until she could see it branded on the back of her eyelids. She wasn’t conceited enough to think that anyone here, at a cemetery in Moscow at the absolute crack of dawn, would recognize her, but you could never be too careful.
Also, she didn’t want to think too hard about what she was doing. Her purse, tucked tightly under her left arm, felt like she had stuffed it full of anvils. If she thought too hard about this, she would collapse under the weight.
Right turn. Skip the first path. Left at the juncture.
Yuna finally arrived at the point where Sveta had told her to leave the neatly manicured gravel paths — at the intersection of a crumbling gravestone, whose engraved words were so faded that Yuna wouldn’t be able to read them even if they weren’t in Russian, and a tall statue of an angel. She paused for a moment, looking up at the angel’s face. It was a beautiful statue. There was bird shit on one of the wings. Yuna continued on.
She picked her way through the graves. Some had flowers on them, looked well-tended, well-loved. Others looked old, and weeds poked up through the grass. Yuna knew that the grave she was looking for would be pristine.
Finally, she was there. The grave looked the same as it did in Sveta’s photo, despite the fact that Sveta herself hadn’t been here in at least seven years. Dark marble, shining brightly in the early morning light. For the first time since arriving, Yuna’s steps faltered. She sucked in a deep breath, and slowly, haltingly, approached the grave.
Ирина Розанова, read the name carved into the headstone. Irina Rozanova.
Everything was quiet here. Yuna was the only person around, and for a moment, surrounded by the graves of those long dead, it felt like she might be the only person in the world still alive. She shook off the feeling and cleared her throat. She was here for a reason. She had things to say, and something important to do. She could do this.
I can do this.
“I think I’m jealous of you.” Well, fuck. That was not how she wanted to start.
She had planned to lead with hello, or an introduction, or something meaningful. Mother to mother. She had practiced, muttering under her breath in the shower or out on a walk around the lake. She had rehearsed, ever since she had agreed to this visit, this layover in Moscow with only one purpose before she continued on to St. Petersburg. Yuna had had her speech prepared. Meeting her son’s mother was important. She didn’t intend to mess it up.
Too late for that.
“I don’t want to be,” Yuna heard herself continue. The planned speech was officially abandoned, then. “I shouldn’t be. It makes no sense. It’s just…you had him for twelve years. And you left him first.”
All the air left her in a rush as her eyes filled with tears. Yuna fought to keep her voice steady, but it wavered as she forced out her next sentence. It didn’t come out as more than a whisper.
“You don’t know what it’s like to lose him.”
***
Yuna had never considered that she would one day go to Russia. There were so many places that she would have preferred to visit, when she was young. Warm countries, happy countries. Places where she could lounge on a beach and escape the long Canadian winters that she knew she would never fully enjoy.
And after Ilya walked into her son’s life, she wanted to go to Russia even less.
Ilya spoke about Russia rarely. She knew he missed it, knew he missed his mother and her grave and the childhood that was buried in the same plot. She knew he missed the language, especially when he was tired or emotional or wishing that somehow, things could be different. She knew Russia was complicated for him — a home that wasn’t home anymore, a brother that was no longer family, and two dead parents who had both cut him deeper than he ever liked to admit.
Russia was complicated for Ilya. It hadn’t been for Yuna. She was grateful, she supposed, for the country that shaped the man her son loved. The man that she loved like a son. But she hated Russia for what it did to him, the ways it hardened him, made him afraid. She hated Russia because Russia hated Ilya for loving Shane, and she was not forgiving of anything that hurt her sons.
So Yuna had never planned to go to Russia. She knew Shane would have loved to go, would have been thrilled to see the streets where Ilya grew up, where he became the man he fell in love with. Russia would never welcome Shane. She hated that too. That some part of Ilya’s past would never be open for Shane to see, to know, the way that he knew everything else about his fiancé.
And then Ilya was dead, and Shane was never going to be the same again, and Russia was pushed far out of Yuna’s mind. None of it mattered anymore. Not without him.
Until now. Six years on, some days Yuna still woke up and thought Ilya was still alive. Imagined him coming over for Sunday dinner, with Shane or without him, bounding through the front door with his crooked grin and loud voice yelling out Hello, Hollanders! every time. She still talked to Shane over FaceTime and expected to hear Ilya teasing from the other room, making Shane’s face light up in the way it hadn’t in years now.
Yuna sighed, picking up her phone from where she had placed it rather forcefully on the kitchen counter. Sitting at the table, David raised his eyebrows, taking a long sip from his coffee. Ilya bought him that mug, Yuna thought absently. David loved it. It said “World’s Best Puzzler,” and David used it every morning without fail.
“Sheila just texted. The divorce is final, and she wants to use some of the settlement for a ‘girls trip,’” Yuna said, making air quotes as she snarked at the phrase. “Like we aren’t all getting close to sixty and ‘girls trip’ isn’t a phrase that we should have abandoned in the early 2000s.”
David smirked the way he always did when she ranted about something that didn’t matter at all. “Sounds like fun. Where does she want to go?”
“St. Petersburg. God knows why. Maybe she wants some sort of Anna Karenina post-divorce fairytale love story.” Yuna rolls her eyes lightly. Sheila is a notorious romantic. It’d be funnier if her now ex-husband hadn’t been such a massive jerk.
“It sounds like fun. It’s supposed to be a beautiful city. And maybe it would be nice, to go. To see some of Russia.”
“Maybe…maybe.” Yuna smiled tightly and David let it slide.
Later that night, after David had gone up to bed to read, Yuna found herself looking at plane tickets. There was nothing direct to St. Petersburg, but she could fly from Toronto to Moscow. Moscow. She’d never wanted to go before. But now Ilya was dead and before she could think any more about it, Yuna was digging in her purse for her credit card and texting Sheila that she was in.
Yuna walked up the stairs, pausing on the landing to look at the pictures hung on the wall. Most were of Shane, ranging from when he was a baby to one taken just last year, posed next to the Stanley Cup at the cottage. In the picture, he has Ilya’s necklace around his neck, for once not tucked underneath his shirt, and he’s smiling softly. Yuna stared at the ring hanging from the chain and the matching one on Shane’s finger, and thought for the millionth time that she wished she got to throw them a wedding.
Her eyes drifted to the picture hanging right next to that one. It’s a scan of an old printed photo; the original had hung in Ilya’s house and now sat on Shane’s nightstand at the cottage. In it, an eight year old Ilya grins at the camera, held tightly in his mother’s lap. Irina’s smile is small, but her eyes are sparkling. They look so much alike.
Yuna pulled out her phone and sent a message to Sveta. She was still standing on the stairs, staring into young Ilya’s eyes and wishing that he was standing there in front of her, when Sveta texted back. The first message was a link to Google Maps, with a pin dropped into the middle of a cemetery map. The second was a picture of a grave, with a stunning bouquet of lilies resting in front of the headstone. Yuna took half a second to wonder why Sveta readily had a photo of Irina’s grave when the third message arrived.
Sveta: I always sent him picture when I visit. This was most recent. I have not gone since. He liked to see that she was not alone.
Oh, my sweet boy. Her son. The one she never thought she’d get. And the one she never, ever thought she would lose.
Yuna thanked Sveta and continued up the stairs, pausing as she always did to kiss her fingertips gently and press them to the frame of the photo at the top of the stairs. Shane and Ilya were smushed together, huge grins on their faces and tears in their eyes, Ilya’s head on Shane’s shoulder and his hand on Shane’s chest. His newly-given engagement ring rested right over Shane’s heart.
David looked up as she entered the bedroom, glasses perched on his nose. Yuna smiled softly and climbed into bed next to him, over the covers.
“May 18th through 27th,” she said. “Tickets are booked. Sheila’s doing the hotel once she hears back from everyone else.”
“St. Petersburg,” David said with a small smile.
“St. Petersburg,” Yuna repeated. “With a one night layover in Moscow.”
David nodded, his smile slipping slightly, and pulled her into his chest. She’d call Shane tomorrow, she decided. For now, she let herself be held. Irina, Ilya, here I come.
***
Now, standing in front of Irina’s grave, one hand clutching her purse and the other frantically wiping at her eyes, Yuna exhaled shakily.
“I just. I know that isn’t fair. And I know that you did lose him, in a way. But you had him when he was a baby, and when he started to grow up. And you have him now. I believe that. He’s with you again, and I’m so grateful for that.” She paused, swallowing thickly, trying to keep the tears from making her throat close too much to talk.
“I only had him for five years. Only five. It…it wasn’t enough. How was I only his mother for five years? So I’m jealous of you.
“It’s just…he was so good. He was so easy to love. I know he was your son, but he was mine too. He was mine— ” Yuna’s voice trailed off into sobs. She let go of her purse to hold herself around the waist with both arms as she cried for her sons. For Ilya, who left them too early, who only got 31 years. For Shane, who one day found himself missing his other half. Who picked himself up and carried on despite it. For David, who had loved Ilya the moment he first walked into their cottage all those years ago, who had taught Ilya what it meant to have a father. And for herself, for her second son, the one she never knew she wanted.
After an indeterminable amount of time, Yuna’s breathing slowed and her spine straightened. She inhaled deeply and looked up at the sky. When she brought her gaze back to Irina’s grave, Yuna forced herself to smile.
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I wanted to say. I actually came here to introduce myself. I want you to know that he wasn’t alone. He had Shane, and Sveta, and his team, but he also had a mother. I loved him like a son, and I think — no, I know — that he knew it. He had a mother until the end. He was loved. I—”
Yuna took a moment to steady herself. She didn’t want to cry again.
“I took care of him. The way that I hope you would have wanted me to. I want you to know that. And I hope that you’re taking care of him now. I’m sure you are. I’m sure you’re making him tea with jam and all the pelmeni he can eat. I’m so happy he has you with him, now that I can’t be with him anymore.”
Yuna slowly reached up and pulled her purse off her shoulder. Clutching it tightly to herself, she knelt down on the grass in front of Irina’s headstone.
“I brought something. And, Ilya, since I’m sure you’re watching me right now, please don’t laugh too much.” Yuna smiled slightly to herself as she opened her purse and pulled out the small wooden box and the spoon that she stole from the tea service in her hotel room. “I didn’t want to figure out where to get a shovel.”
Still smiling at the thought of what Ilya’s face would look like if he could see her right now, Yuna placed the box on the ground and began to dig a small hole in the earth, right in front of the headstone. She hummed under her breath as she dug, a lullaby that she used to sing to Shane. Ilya had heard her singing it mindlessly to herself in the kitchen one day. She still remembered the look on his face when he told her that it reminded him of a song his mother used to sing him.
When Yuna had deemed her hole sufficiently large enough, she put down the spoon and picked up the box. She gently opened the lid. Inside sat a lock of Ilya’s hair — a single small, perfect, golden curl. His ashes have long been scattered at the cottage that he and Shane cherished, but they had kept a few locks of his hair. Shane has one, still. Sveta, another. This curl was Yuna’s, but David has one too. Yuna is alright with parting with hers. A last gift to Ilya’s mother, the last thing she could do for both of them now.
She looked at the lock of hair one last time, imagining ruffling Ilya’s hair from behind the couch as he sat eating ice cream and watching one of Shane’s games. She knows he’s still watching, wherever he is now.
Yuna closed the lid and kissed it gently before lowering the box into the ground. She looked at the spoon before shaking her head and covering the box with dirt, patting it down with her hands.
“There. That’s better, isn’t it?” Yuna stood, brushing her hands on her pants. She picked her purse up from the ground, tucking the spoon back inside. The bag felt much lighter now, even though the box couldn’t have weighed more than a few grams. Yuna took a step back, and then another.
“Goodbye, Irina. It was nice to meet you.” Yuna turned to walk away, before hesitating and looking one last time at the grave and the small displaced mound in front of it. “Thank you, for your son. I meant it when I said he was loved. He still is. And I look forward to meeting you properly one day. I know he’ll be so excited to introduce us. Until then, hug him tight for me.”
As Yuna walked away, she heard a faint voice in her head. Not Irina’s — Yuna wouldn’t know what she sounded like. This voice belonged to her son. Her Ilya. Thank you, Mom.
“I love you, Ilya,” she whispered into the breeze. “Always will.”
With that, Yuna started off out of the cemetery, this time with her head held high. She had a few hours to explore, and all of Moscow at her fingertips.