Two Months and Three Days (Sinister Romance #1)

Chapter 4 (Part I)

Arina had always been this way. Her parents lived in a private sector on the outskirts of Vladimir. It was paradise, pure and simple. They had a vegetable garden and their own livestock. It would have been a real heaven if not for their daughter. Who could say why she had turned out to be so strange? Her mother used to call her crazy. She once yelled at Arina to stop giving her a hard time, but Arina just stood there, in the middle of their large backyard surrounded by a wooden fence, scowling at her mother, pressing their loud rooster named Petya close to her chest, screaming, "No! Don't kill him!"

"But he's old!" her mother swung her arms. "What the hell am I supposed to do with him? Should I start paying him a pension?"

"It's not Petya's fault that he's old! Grandma's old too. Should we use her for soup?" Arina gave her mother a sullen look as if she were an enemy of the state and traitor of the motherland. Since her mother had retired, her parents' farm had grown. They had chickens, piglets for sale, goat's milk and eggs. Both her mother and her father literally cheered up, plunging headlong into the idea of sustainable living. There was a time when they bred rabbits but Arina took their killing too close to heart as if she were the one being killed and stripped of her valuable fur. Eventually, her parents had to give up the idea.

On the other hand, Arina happily looked after their goat, fussed over the chicks like a child over a new toy, and collected eggs. Everything was fine until the next incident when their daughter would start giving them a hard time again, like the time when Arina, crying her eyes out, refused to eat pork chops made from her "best friend," a piglet named Grishka, one she couldn't save.

"He knew how to smile!" Arina gave her mother a piercing glance that would make your heart clench. Pale, with her messy black hair, she was burning her mother alive with her scorching blue eyes. Yes, she was definitely odd. In olden days, people used to say that two birthmarks were a mark of the devil, especially if they were on your face. Arina spoke with the animals as if they were her friends, as if she could understand their language.

"Who? Who knew how to smile?" her mother said through clenched teeth. Her father, in the meantime, was choking down a chop made from Arina's "friend," a delicious chop with mushroom gravy.

"Grishka did. He almost knew how to talk!"

"I wish you were friends with people!" her mother snorted.

"You still eat store-bought ground meat," Arina's father remarked with sarcasm, piling a third pork chop made "from Grishka" on his plate. "You're not a vegetarian."

Arina knew that it wasn't her parents' fault. Everyone lived the way they did, and they lived like everyone else. No one looked at a pig as a living creature. That's what living in the country was like. People were more cynical. They perceived reality in a simpler and no doubt healthier way than those who lived in the city. Piglets were basically just pork chops and meat jelly that ran around the backyard and didn't require space in the fridge.

That's why Arina left.

That's why she spent every third night in the white tiled reception at the veterinary clinic on Krasnoselskaya Street, taking care of cats vomiting up swollen wool and dogs bitten by ticks to avoid arguing with anyone, to avoid offending anyone.

At that moment, Arina realized that she had hurt the photographer, the one of whom she had dreamt. What was she dreaming of? Disturbing, confusing images flew through her mind, his tight lips opening, getting closer to her lips, his tangled bangs tickling her face, his intense gaze making her heart beat faster. The future that she had imagined, fuzzy like a watercolor of your favorite fairy tale, made Arina very excited. Every time she thought of his face, her mouth went dry and her cheeks blushed red.