Poison Pill by Glenn Kaplan

Author:Glenn Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

41

33 SLOANE GARDENS • ROYAL BOROUGH OF KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM.

Tanya came back to Sloane Gardens after another happy morning of watching mothers in the park with their babies. The weather felt brilliant, so clear and balmy. This morning it was Green Park. She was mapping out walks she would take and playgrounds she would visit when her little girl arrived. In the meantime, she was actually enjoying the occasional morning sickness, and eagerly awaiting the second trimester when she would finally begin to look pregnant.

Lucja opened the front door as she approached. The maid wore a big, wide smile and her eyes were bright with excitement, so different from her usual glum deference.

“What is it, Lucja?” Tanya asked.

“Come. You see.”

As she entered, Lucja took her in her arms and hugged her. She mumbled something in Polish, then kissed the top of her head. As Lucja let her go, she turned Tanya toward the living room. “From your father,” she said. “He have delivered when you in park.”

Tanya gazed into her normally spare, minimalist parlor. It looked like a warehouse of baby equipment. A crowded warehouse, chockablock with cribs, playpens, bassinettes, changing tables, carriages, strollers of the walking and jogging varieties, high chairs, and enough toys and playthings to take all the infants of a small city through their first three years.

“Oh my gawd, Lucja!” she said with happy confusion. “My father sent all this? Really?”

The maid nodded emphatically and gave her another hug. She turned Tanya by the shoulders to face the gigantic floral arrangement in the foyer, a riot of all-white blossoms. “Look, Miss Tanya!”

She reached for the envelope sticking up from the sea of white calla lilies. “Tanya,” it read in Viktor’s tight, crunched, uncomfortable English scrawl. She opened the envelope, and read, with some effort, Viktor’s handwritten note:

My Dear Tatiana,

Come to Kent this Friday and spend the weekend.

It is time to make everything all right.

Love,

Papa

Lucja said breathlessly, “Say he send the Rolls for you Friday morning. Take you to the country. Miss Tanya, I pack for you already. Is okay?”

“Yes, Lucja,” she said, trying hard to believe that this was not a dream. Could he really be accepting her baby and all her plans? Dare she believe him? “Yes, that’s all okay. Everything.” She was pleased and possibly, just possibly, thrilled at the acceptance and (dare she hope?) love that might, just might, maybe, impossibly, possibly be coming her way.

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