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Saturday morning dawned winter grey, with the potential promise of sunshine to burn away the clouds in an hour or two. Tromping down the stairs, Christine dragged herself towards the kitchen. One of the wonderful things about weekends was not having to be awake at seven in the bloody morning, but she'd been restless last night and as such was up at seven in the morning anyways.
It was her birthday in a couple of days. Sixteen candles and all that.
She was always restless around her birthdays though. For the rest of the year her parentage never really seemed to matter. It wasn't as if she was the only girl who didn't know her father. Plenty of her friends were from single family homes, and there were some who had never met their fathers either. She wasn't special or unique in that way.
And yet, whenever her birthday rolled around, she couldn't help but wonder about him.
"Good morning," her mother said, smiling over the newspaper as Christine shuffled her way in to the kitchen.
Christine mumbled an incoherent 'good morning' back as she started up the electric kettle to heat some water for tea, because she certainly wasn't going to be functional without a cuppa.
Her mind was fixated on the memory of her birth certificate. Her mother's name was on it, of course. Anna Khitrova. Her father's was there too: Mikhail Nikolaevsky. Beyond the knowledge of that name and the fact that he had left her and her mother when Christine was a baby, that was all Christine had of him. Was it strange to want more?
"Sleep well?"
"Not really."
If it was her poor sleep last night that lent Christine boldness, or if it was (almost) sixteen years of wondering coming to a head, she couldn't say. Christine spoke anyway.
"Mum?"
"Yes?"
"I want to try and find Da."
The kettle whistled, almost in warning.
Her mother took a deep breath, and Christine watched carefully out of the corner of her eye as she dropped a teabag in her mug and poured hot water. The expression on her mother's face started off heartbroken, shifted to worried, and settled in on sadness. This was worrisome to Christine.
"I don't talk about him because there isn't much to say."
"Please don't give me that," she replied, feeling more tired than ever. "Whenever he comes up in conversation, you always say that."
"Why now, Christine?"
"Can you tell me about him? Something? Anything?
She looked conflicted for a moment, then locked eyes with Christine.
"Do you want the truth, or do you want to know what really happened?"
Christine frowned. This was growing stranger by the second. "There's a difference? That doesn't make any sense."
She thought she saw the smallest of smiles on her mother's face, but it was unclear if it was bitter or just thoughtful. The moment that passed seemed full of something, but Christine couldn't place it. Best bet was that Mum was trying to organize thoughts, and it was harder that it ought to have been.
The time her mother took to formulate an answer was uncomfortable to say the least. Christine blew at her tea, and took careful sips as she waited for an answer. Any answer.
"Your father wasn't the easiest man to understand," Mum finally said. "Not the most savory of characters either."
"What's that mean?"
"He with a strange crowd. A dangerous one. I didn't know him long, but--" Her breath hitched. "I didn't know him long. I like to think I knew him enough though. He was guarded, and didn't talk much. He was thoughtful though. Smart. You wouldn't have known it at first, but he was."
After she'd taken a considering moment to fold the paper and run a hand over the perfect crease, she finished softly. "He was good with motorbikes."
Christine tried to form a picture of the man in her head. Would he be blond, like her and her mother? Sharpened features, maybe, seeing as he must have come from some kind of rough life. A tall man, crouched by an ancient motorcycle like the one Mum kept in the garden shed.
The image's formation was interrupted by her mother.
"He cared a great deal about you. I'm fairly sure that if he were to explain it, he'd say that's why he had us leave. To keep you and me safe from those he worked with."
"Why didn't he just leave though?" Christine demanded. "Why didn't he come with us?"
Her mother's response was carefully measured. "The sort of people he was involved with aren't the sort he could have walked away from."
It came to Christine in an almost horrifying moment of revelation.
"He was a criminal. My da was a criminal. Is one." The words spun in her head, or her head spun with the words. It was hard to tell.
The nod she received in answer was a pained one. "You have to promise me something, Christine."
Christine didn't react. It was the only thing she could do, if only because she was still processing what she'd just been told. Her mother had never said this much about Mikhail -- her father -- before.
"Promise," Mum said again, a little more sharply. "You need to promise me you won't go looking for him. He wouldn't want you to, and he wouldn't want you to get caught up in his mess. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for him. You wouldn't be. He wanted to make sure you had a better life. Can you promise me that?"
The tea kettle (she must have forgotten to turn it off) whistled one more time.
-Fin-