Babayaga

reach out to embrace her. He simply stood smiling at her, a little awkward and formal, feeling stiff in his newly tailored light wool suit. The main room of their apartment felt very small and empty, he had never been more aware that they were the only two living things it contained. Seeming unsure of what to do, she merely stood there too. She straightened her skirt with her hands. “Where have you been? What happened to you?” she asked.
    “I honestly do not know where to begin.” He shrugged. “I have been working, investigating, solving a crime, tying up loose ends. But I am home now, and I will not be going back in to work for a little while.” His smile felt awkward on his face, his stomach churned with worry. “Oh here, look, I brought home a present for you.” He pulled a large frame wrapped in butcher paper out from beside the table. He bent over and tore the paper away, trying not to shake from all the emotion he was working to contain. He stepped to the side so she could see the painting.
    It was rough and Impressionistic. Done mostly in shades of blue—cornflower, Persian, and cobalt—it showed an older woman with melancholy eyes gazing out a garret window. She looked as if she might be recalling better days, or watching her beloved depart down the avenue. “I introduced a dealer I know to the artist today. He liked the work, picked up a dozen or so of this fellow’s pieces. Interesting artist, he mostly does portraits of his wife. He’s been painting her for years now,” said Vidot. “The dealer, Christof, owed me a favor. He’s going to cobble together a show of the work and get them a bit of press as well. I picked this one out to keep, I thought you might like it.”
    “Oh,” Adèle said, studying the painting. “I’m not sure it’s very good.”
    “No?” Vidot came and stood by her side. “Why don’t we let it stay a few days and try it out? If we still don’t like it, I can return it to Christof.” He looked down at her, trying to look calm and serene. “It is good to be home, Adèle.”
    “I am glad you are home too,” she said, looking up at Vidot, her expression unfathomable.
    He stood there, trying to guess what she felt. Relief? Guilt? Absolution? The mantel clock’s ticking was the only sound in the apartment. Vidot felt torn, his whole soul exhaling with relief at having made it, finally, here to his own apartment. But his heart was twisted and unsure whether, despite both his words and hers, he truly was at a place he could call home.
    He reminded himself that he was a Frenchman, he was expected to understand these wanderings of the heart. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to ignore the whole thing and simply find a lover of his own. Perhaps she expected him to, or perhaps she thought he already had. But that had never been his style. He was not moralistic, he was simply a man in love with his wife.
    For the past few days he had done all he could to resolve the many complex facets of this case, as well as coming to terms with the parts he would never solve. He had considered paying a visit to her lover, Alberto, repeatedly imagined walking up to him on the street and popping the man in the nose or socking him in the eye, but after he had turned it over in his mind he decided that he did not want or need that kind of justice.
    His only desire was to know if this apartment could hold any possibility of being a home for him. If it did, then he could begin again, letting the past grow faint and weak and vanish in that way it naturally does. But this was it, the final riddle of his journey. He did not feel the urge to smile. The emotions he was going through and whatever she might be feeling seemed more unfathomable to him than the secrets of any crime, more mysterious than any mystical spell. Over the past few days he had gone through an incredible, inconceivable metamorphosis and somehow, miraculously, had survived. Along the way he had accomplished amazing feats and overcome grave threats of a scale he could have never imagined, and yet here he was, in the end, standing in a smartly tailored suit, fumbling, awkward, wordless and shy, faced with nothing more than the eyes of the woman he loved. Like an ancient blind weaver who has run out of thread, he felt quite empty-handed.
    So, in a gesture that held uncertainty, curiosity, and more than a little fear, he gently reached out to take his wife’s small, soft hand into his own. She did not resist, yet her