“So everything’s ready for tomorrow?” Grandfather Popescu asked as he, Tsura and Mihai sat around the kitchen table eating a lunch of bread with tomato and onion salad.
Mihai nodded, eyes on the table as he mopped the bottom of his salad bowl with his bread, catching the leftover olive oil and tomato juice. “Yes.”
“The priest’s been paid? There was no trouble… encouraging him to overlook the fact I don’t have any baptism records?” Tsura asked.
There was silence as Mihai finished chewing his bite. He took a drink of water before saying. “Done.”
“And everything else? It’s been explained around the village why my parents and godparents couldn’t come? Because of the planting season and—”
“Taken care of,” Mihai broke in.
Her eyes flashed up at him, but he met her gaze calmly. It didn’t seem like he was impatient or trying to be a jerk. Just as if he didn’t think their upcoming nuptials were anything to be anxious over. Maybe to him they weren’t. Because in his calm, ordered life, he assumed he could control everything, and it would all go according to plan? Or was this just the front he was putting up to keep her pacified?
Tsura pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes, wanting to poke him in the chest or let out a sudden loud noise to break him out of that preternatural calm.
“Also, while we’re speaking of arrangements,” Mihai said, finally looking away as he picked up his bowl and took it to the sink, “I wanted to remind you that after the wedding feast there will be the ceremonial kidnapping of the bride.”
“What?” Tsura felt her heart start to jackrabbit. She was familiar with the custom. Friends of the groom stole the bride away from the wedding until her return was bartered. She jolted to her feet. “No. Let’s skip that.”
Mihai frowned, looking back at her, bowl still in hand. “We can’t. It’s expected.”
She could only stare. “But…” She took a step toward him, lowering her voice. “You know what happened to me. Why I came to live with Luca when I was thirteen. He must have told you. It happened at a wedding. I…” She shuddered. “I can’t be taken off into the dark on another night like that.”
Her entire body tensed with the memories. Roma folk musicians were often hired for weddings and Tsura had gone to listen to her father’s fiddling. She’d thought nothing of walking back to her tribe’s caravan of wagons with a friend afterwards. A night that had left her friend dead and her so battered and broken that when she was eventually found, her father had bucked Roma tradition and taken her to a gagii hospital. Even then she had barely survived the night.
“Luca told me.” Mihai’s voice was unexpectedly gentle.
Tsura’s throat was tight when she looked up into his gray eyes. They too seemed softer than their usual granite.
“So you understand,” she pleaded even though she hated the weakness in her voice. She’d tried so hard to put that night behind her. “I can’t.”
Mihai’s eyes slid away. Then he walked past her, gathered her empty bowl, and went back to the sink, where he started washing both their bowls with water brought in that morning from the pump in the front yard. His voice was once again calmly modulated. “We can’t risk anything out of the ordinary about tomorrow. The ceremonial bridal kidnapping is expected. It must be done.”
Heat gathered in Tsura’s cheeks and it wasn’t from the painful memories. She’d made herself vulnerable in front of this ass and that was all he could say?
A small disbelieving noise escaped her throat. “Do you even care what it will do to me? Being back in that position?”
His eyebrows were furrowed as his head snapped back toward her. “You’ll be safe. It won’t be the sa—”
Mihai stopped mid-sentence when the front door banged open. A tall middle-aged man stepped into the living room.
Mihai’s mouth tightened before he said, “Father.”
Tsura’s eyes widened as she looked back and forth between Mihai and his father. And, she noticed now, the short, stocky woman who’d come in the door behind him. That must be Diana, Mihai’s mother. Tsura had never met the people whose roof Luca had lived under from eleven years on after he saved Mihai’s life. Finally now she had faces to the names. Luca had always spoken of Diana with warmth.
Mihai’s father on the other hand…
Ion Popescu looked around his father’s humble village house with disdain. He was a tall man with broad shoulders, like his son. He had dark hair, only going silver at the temples. “Why won’t you move out of this village shithouse?” His leather shoe stomped toe-first into the smooth dirt floor.
“Ion, don’t,” Diana said. Her voice was small. Tired.
“This is the house I lived in with your mother,” was all Grandfather Popescu said, rising from the kitchen table.
Ion dismissed him with a hand. “It’s an embarrassment. No father of mine should be living so low. And what is this, son? You call and tell me you are getting married? In a village church? What, did you get a slut pregnant?”
Tsura couldn’t help her gasp. She couldn’t imagine how it had been for Luca living for so many years with such a man. From the little Luca had told her, Ion had accepted Diana’s impulsive decision to take Luca in that day on the beach because it was Diana’s father who owned the refinery Ion was so keen to inherit. At least Ion’s contempt had taken the form of a neglectful disregard once Diana’s father died, around the time the boys were sixteen. But still. Was he always this hateful?
Ion’s eyes finally landed on Tsura. Then his gaze froze. She blinked uncomfortably as he zeroed in on her eyes. His bushy eyebrows furrowed, as if trying to put a puzzle together. And then he turned suddenly back to Mihai.
“No!” he suddenly shouted, making a slashing motion with his hand. “You will not marry that dirty little gypsy bastard’s sister.”
Tsura stepped back as if stung. She knew why he’d been staring now. Tiger’s eyes. He must have recognized the unique amber-speckled hue she and her brother shared.
Mihai stepped in front of Tsura, blocking her from Ion’s view. “We can discuss this in the bedroom.”
Ion looked like he was barely containing his fury as he strode through the door off the living room. Mihai followed and shut the door firmly behind him. Though it was quickly apparent that the door didn’t matter. Tsura could hear almost every word that was uttered, especially Ion’s loud voice yelling at his son.
Mihai’s mother came forward and took Tsura’s hand. She was in her late fifties but looked younger, with smooth barely-lined skin and hair that was a peppered mixture of gray and brown. She was a little heavyset and far from beautiful, but she had kind eyes. “I’m so glad to meet you,” she said, ignoring the noise from the other room. Her touch was gentle, her voice quiet. “You must know how much I loved and treasured Luca when he lived with us.”
Tsura nodded. “He told me you were kind to him.”
The older woman’s face shadowed slightly. “I tried to do what I could.”
“You will not marry her,” Ion’s voice resounded from the room beside them. Tsura didn’t think it was loud enough for the neighbors to hear unless they were standing right outside the window. She hurried to the living room window and peered out just in case. She released a breath. No one was around while Ion continued his diatribe.
“You’ve been enough of a disappointment in this life. You had your little fits to keep you out of the army, I didn’t say anything against it—”
Tsura didn’t hear Mihai’s response, but her own back stiffened. Mihai wasn’t able to join the army because he had epilepsy. How dare his father accuse him of shirking his duty? She’d never seen one of the attacks in person, but Luca had. He said they were horrible and they took days for Mihai to recover from.
Ion continued in his overbearing, brutish tone. “Then you leave the business I worked so hard to build up, fine. You wanted to run off to Bucharest like a little girl when the war started, I allowed it.”
“I left to translate for the
German ambassador and even General Antonescu himself!” It was the first time in her life she’d heard Mihai’s voice raised. “It’s a prestigious position, isn’t that all you care about? I’ve even been invited to parties at the Royal Palace—”
Tsura’s mouth twisted in disgust. Mihai was proud of meeting the fascist leader of their country who hated Jews and the Roma? Antonescu, Hitler’s great pal? And she’d actually felt sympathetic for Mihai a second ago.
“I’m going for my last dress fitting,” Tsura announced to the room even though it was an hour before she had to leave. Anything to get out of this house. Let her future husband try to impress his jackass father with all his amazing fascist contacts. She didn’t have to be there to listen to it.