“Mom, look,” Katya’s voice carried through, muffled and distorted by the thickness of water—as if what was happening were unreal. “That’s dad, right?”
“Yes,” I barely managed to breathe, watching as Andrey leaned toward a blonde woman and kissed her lightly on the cheek—the very gesture with which, only a few days ago, he’d kissed me before leaving for a supposed business trip. I saw his hand pause for a moment on her stomach—someone else’s stomach, in which a stranger child was growing. His child. They laughed with the bright laughter of happy people satisfied with their lives. A life where there was no place for me and my daughter.
“Mom! What’s happening?” My daughter’s insistent voice burst into the red haze, tearing through the cocoon of rage I was beginning to fall into.
“Nothing, sunshine,” my voice sounded strange—as if it belonged to someone else: mechanical, colorless, like an answering machine. “It’s just… Dad came back from his trip earlier than planned. Go to school, I… I’ll talk to him.”