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It's breaking your heart, watching your Ilyusha check for a message that will never come.
He tries to seem unaffected, but you see that certain set to his jaw and the distant look in his eyes. You observe the women he flirts with and the cigarettes he pulls out to seem preoccupied with anything but the phone in his pocket, with a person half the world away. You wonder how they hid it for so long. They seem so obvious to you. Jane. It makes you want to laugh.
It's probably your fault. Since Ilyusha is so much like you. Too much like you, Grisha spits as an insult. If only he knew.
He never will. Because this is a secret shame you're willing to keep for your son, a burden you're willing to carry in his place, alongside yours.
You smoke your own cigarette and think of Grisha and Alyosha's expressions after you'd woken up in the hospital. They'd looked at you like it was just another one of your failures in a long list of them. Not Ilyusha, though.
Your faith in God has wavered over the years, but you opened your eyes after taking that bottle of pills and saw your savior. Tears had come in a way they hadn't for a long time, and your devotion had coalesced anew in the form of the twelve-year-old boy crying at your bedside. Your Ilyushenka, your second chance at life.
(Your greatest fear is that he inherited this failure of yours, too.)
This devotion you would later see reflected in the brown eyes of another boy, when you told him he must end things. He eventually understood, only needed to be convinced of the truth. Their relationship had no place in the light of day. Better to snuff it out while still a shameful secret in the dark. A lesson his own mother surely would have taught him if given the chance.
You saved them from themselves, really.
And you can’t help but think of her. You close your eyes and feel the press of her lips against yours and the silky strands of her hair slip through your fingers.
You open your eyes and forcefully blink the memory away.
They’ll get over it. Just like you did.