It doesn’t seem right to ask. He’ll tell her when he wants to. He’d listened so patiently that night, as she spoke aloud everything she’d kept hidden for the past 15 years. He’d always been listening, waiting for her to speak. All this time, and she hadn’t noticed. Hadn’t wanted to notice. But now here he is, in front of her, and suddenly she is listening, wants to know everything about this man, the boy he was. She wants to know his name. But it doesn’t seem polite to ask.
Then one night she thinks, politeness be damned. And she asks him anyway.
It’s late, the kids are long asleep. She’s just gotten in from making a dead drop, giving him an assuring nod as she enters their bedroom to let him know it went okay. She squeezes his arm and immediately heads for the bathroom, tired and gritty.
She turns on the shower and lets steam fill the bathroom, then strips down and climbs in. With eyes closed she hears Philip enter the bathroom a few minutes later, hears the clink of his belt buckle on the floor and the rattle of his watch on the countertop. He climbs into the shower with her, the space between them tight in the small stall.
His eyes are on her, observant and calm as she lathers her shampoo and rinses.
“Paige didn’t do so well on her math test,” he says after a while, frowning.
“Oh. She’ll be okay,” Elizabeth says with a nod. “How was hockey practice?”
Philip winces and it makes her break into a grin.
“That bad?” she asks, almost giggling.
“His shins are black and blue but he stuck it out. His legs are just growing so fast. His balance on the ice changes every day.”
“What’s your name?” she asks suddenly. The brazenness of it makes her feel small, like a child who’s just overstepped. She braces herself for him to close off, though she doesn’t know why.
“Misha,” he says, a droplet of water stuck on his eyelash. It moves when he blinks.
“Hmm.” She nods. “It suits you.”
He gives a noncommittal shrug. “It did.”
“Just Misha? Or…” She searches his face, his smooth jawline, the way his eyes droop when he’s tired.
“Mikhail. But I was more of a Misha.”
“I didn’t have any nicknames. Only from my mother.”
Philip reaches for the bar of soap. “What did she call you?”
“Nadenka,” Elizabeth whispers, and feels like she’s summoning a ghost.
She looks down at the shower floor, the water swirling slowly towards the drain. “Is it okay that I asked?”
Philip nods. “It’s okay. I wanted to tell you.”
She meets his eyes, her voice low. “Good. I wanted to ask.”
She twists her long hair on top of her head and turns off the water, reaches for a towel.
In bed she stretches out along the length of his body and asks what he remembers from back home. Watches the rise and fall of his chest. Tries to picture him in Tobolsk. When he says the name he smiles, and for a moment her heart aches to know Misha, the man who stopped existing all those years ago in a room flooded with daylight, a room with floorboards that creaked beneath her feet as she turned and met Philip for the first time.
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