Would you like to know more about your father’s illegal activities?

GET OUT OF MY LIFE.

I’m very sorry.

LEAVE ME ALONE!

There were texts from the others, too: Any updates on Svetlana?

She didn’t answer.

She turned off her phone.

Her parents were talking in the kitchen; she couldn’t stay in her bedroom forever. Ilanka wandered in and got a glass and filled it with cold water and sat at the kitchen island. She thought about going back to her room for her phone, but only if she could guarantee the device wouldn’t text her again, and she couldn’t.

“Anyway,” her father said. “It’ll be a quick trip. Good to get some face time.”

“Where are you going?” Ilanka asked.

“Moscow,” he said.

He did this maybe three times a year, in addition to the annual family trip they all took to Saint Petersburg, but usually with more notice. This seemed … sudden.

She said, “What are you doing there?”

“Just meetings,” he said.

“With who?” she pressed, annoyed that the device had made her suspicious of her own dad.

“My employees?” he said, like it was so obvious. And it was true that most of the company’s data mining and analysis was done overseas.

“Let’s not talk about work today, okay?” her mother said. “How about we watch a movie? Take our mind off things while we wait for updates?”

“Excellent idea,” her father said.

“Go ahead, Ilanka. Queue something up. We’ll try calling them again or just going to the hospital together after, okay?”

Ilanka wanted to say, No, let’s hang out. Let’s talk.

Her mother said, “Nothing too heavy, okay?” and gave her a warm look. Now that she’d calmed down she seemed a little bit softened by the situation, probably imagining how she’d feel if it had been Ilanka who’d been in an accident. Hug your kids closer and all that.

And why hadn’t it been Ilanka? Why had Svetlana been the one it went after? If Ilanka had lied about the device instead of being so open, would it still have happened? Why did the whole thing have to be a secret anyway?

In the living room, Ilanka turned on the TV and went to the Netflix app and it asked who was watching and she clicked on the “family” profile; its icon was a smiling face. Rain started to tickle the windows, blurring the world outside.

Marwan

MARWAN

Eden stopped suddenly a few feet away from him on the sidewalk, like some force field had appeared between them. They shared this intense look that he read as an agreement of some kind. Pushing through the field, he stepped toward her and she met him halfway. Holding her felt easy and right.

Eden said, “We have to get rid of it,” into his shoulder.