Chapter Text
2028
Katerina got the acceptance email to McGill on a random Monday. She had applied to multiple universities in Canada, and finally got an answer.
“Dear Miss Rosanov,
Congratulations! You have been admitted to McGill University…”
She squealed and kicked her feet on the bed. She was going to leave, finally. Her grandmother opened the door and checked inside.
“Everything okay, Katjusha?” she asked.
“Everything is good, babushka,” she replied, not giving herself away, but smiling lightly.
🏒
2026
For the last two years, she had been living with her grandparents from her mother’s side. In June, two weeks after she had turned sixteen, her mother and father had a bad car accident. Her father had died on the scene, her mother days later at the hospital. The news had spoken of the tragedy as an accident, but Katerina knew her father’s substance abuse, even though they had not declared it to the public. Her dedushka had asked for a favor, and since Alexei Rosanov and Nikolai Rosanov were both decorated police officers, it was in the best interest of all not to declare everything. So Katerina went with the only family she had left.
It had been a weird time for her. Her father had been a distant man. He worked, got high, slept, got drunk, and passed out as the most common activities. She was not sure he cared about her much. Her mother was more dotting; she made sure the house was in order, worried about money, and how to hide the fact they always ran out of money. It took a lot out of her, and as the years passed, her mother was a ghost of who she was. Katerina mourned her mother, not much her father.
It came as a surprise when a lawyer contacted her a month after the funeral.
“Hello,” she answered the phone.
“Hello, I am looking for Miss Rosanov,” a man’s voice replied.
“This is she.”
“Aa, Miss Rosanov, I am very sorry for your loss. My name is Mr. Aliev. I am contacting you regarding the payments of your high school. We require proof of the new school year to proceed with payments.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean,” she replied, confused.
“I am sorry, Miss. Are you aware of your personal school funds? I have been communicating with your mother, god rest her soul, up to this point. I assumed you knew. Your uncle Ilya Rosanov has created a trust fund to ensure your schooling and your wellbeing, provided any expense is justified, under the aforementioned conditions,” the voice stopped, expecting an answer back.
She knew she had an uncle; he had moved to Canada to play hockey. No one in her family talked about him. She had remembered when she was twelve, a time someone had asked her at school if she, a Rosanov, was related to the hockey player Ilya Rosanov. She did not know, so she had asked her parents when she had returned from boarding school during Easter holiday.
Her mother had dropped her dish in the sink, like it burned, and had mimed shushing with her finger. Stunned by the behavior, she said nothing. Her mother stood like that, frozen to see if her father, passed out on the couch in front of the television, had heard, but he only stirred, showing no sign. After she reached close and said in a hushed voice,
“We do not talk about that. If someone asks, we don’t know anything. Listen to me! Never mention that name in front of your father,” her mother’s fingers diged in her arm.
Katerina only nodded, scared of her mother’s reaction. If someone mentioned his name in public, she always just shook her head to indicate no.
That was pretty much what she knew. So she made an appointment with the lawyer and hung up.
Her mother had taught her very little as far as she could remember. Since the age of six, she had been sent to boarding school, out of the way as her father had liked to put it. She saw them only six weeks in total, for Christmas holidays, Easter, and the two weeks of the summer, when she took supplementary lessons. She always took supplementary lessons, her mother insisted. The few lessons her mother had taught her were important.
Firstly, “always keep money a secret, from friends, neighbors, even husband,” she had said once, laughing afterwards.
Katerina felt the sadness of that laugh.
Secondly, you should love yourself, for others would not.
“The only person in the world who loves you is you,” she had smiled and added, “and me. Only mothers love like this, like they would burn.”
The third lesson had come not from her words but her situation. The women’s undergarments that were not her mother’s were found in the house. The cigar burns on the couch, the packed bag she kept in her wardrobe. You did not think of such details, for individually they do not mean much, but Katerina figured out around 15 that her mother did not tell her to stay for supplementary lessons during the summer for educational reasons.
So the third lesson, she vowed to follow, was to avoid marrying such a man.
She did not tell her grandparents about the phone call. They had already asked her about her high school, she had told them; her parents had sorted all the years out. That’s what her mother had told her months ago.
That night, she used a VPN her friend had lent to her to watch pirated Western shows. She Googled ‘Ilya Rosanov’, and scrolled, scrolled, scrolled…
🏒
The meeting with Mr. Aliev was enlightening. He explained that the family was not allowed to contact Mr. Rozanov, but that money was added periodically to the fund. He also explained that the reason her mother had chosen a boarding school was to make sure to justify all expenses easily for both parties.
“How long will this trust exist?” she asked, after all questions about Ilya Rozanov were squashed with a wall of inability to answer by the lawyer.
“The trust is here until you are of age. Then all the fund will be released to you to use as you see fit.”
“How much is the estimate for that?” she asked curiously.
“If we estimate a similar expense for the next two years, there should be left 1,000,000 euros or around 9,023,000 rubles,” the man said professionally, while Katerina’s jaw came loose.
“May… may I request only I be contacted for documents in the future, and not my grandparents?” she inquired.
“Of course, miss, please write down your cell phone number,” he placed paper and pen in front of her.
She left bewildered. She did not return to her grandparents’ house immediately, but stopped at home. It was eerily quiet. It was still the same couch, the same curtains, the same smell with a hint of dust. The boxes were the only difference. Babushka was packing things to take with her and leaving the rest to be sold with the house.
Katerina walked into her parents’ room and crawled under the bed, dragging an old brown suitcase held closed with yarn. She opened it carefully, but pictures spilled anyway. She moved the top ones out of the way, looking for the old ones underneath. In a red-covered small photo album wedged inside a bigger black album, she found the pictures she was looking for.
A beautiful woman with golden hair holding the hand of two boys. The old one with the serious face, pouting a little, was her father; the young one smiling ear to ear was Ilya. It was written on the back of the picture, Irina, Alexei & Ilya, 1997. The boy looked 6 or 7 years old. She turned the page to another picture of him in skates and a hockey stick, another picture of him in a yard somewhere, another in a league of hockey –it took her a moment to distinguish him from the lineup– another picture leaving for the US, and then empty pages. No more pictures of Ilya Rozanov, yet if you searched the internet you could find millions.
She put everything as it was, but took the red album.
🏒
2028
Two years later she applied only to Canadian schools. She chose McGill and applied for a visa. It took some time and a lot of documents, but she managed to get everything ready.
She left a letter for her grandparents who had found some good marriage matches for her, considering that they thought she was going to continue in Lomonosov Moscow State University.
All her life she had lived in a dorm, so she knew to pack light. Baggages in the trunk of the taxi taking her to the airport, she made a stop to leave a letter under the door. Her babushka will probably find it in the morning.
She left to be free, to learn, to build a life, and to meet Ilya Rozanov.