Do You Promise Not to Tell? by Mary Jane Clark Read Free Book Online Page A

newly returned to the cleaned-up waterway. All part of the plan.
    It was filthy work, and exhausting. Funny how a human being could sleep so well after so gruesome an experience. It was the sleep of the deadly . . . and the desperate—
    What an idiot! In the haste of disposing of Misha, one loose end had been left dangling. The design plans—they were still out there in Little Odessa.

Chapter 21
    The bony fingers of Nadine Paradise rubbed the milky enamel crescent she’d bought at the Churchill’s auction. Her eyes, eyes that had watched vigilantly for nearly eight decades, appreciatively took in every detail of the work of art that was meant to be worn.
    Life was strange. After eight decades on this earth, she knew this. That she should now own both halves of the brooch, proved it.
    There were some things she should cut back on, but the purchase of this pin was a necessity, not a luxury.
    Nadine sighed and sat back in the comfortably worn, green velvet armchair, her old eyes falling on the silver-framed black-and-white picture sitting on the mahogany table beside her. A young ballerina in a feathered headpiece was caught in midair in one of a series of whipping turns from
Swan Lake
. Nadine remembered with pleasure that the most famous ballet critic of the time had called her dancing both “astonishing” and “frightening.”
    The former prima ballerina closed her eyes, remembering how she and her mother had painstakingly inspected the stage to choose the exact spot at which Nadine would perform those notoriously difficult turns known as pirouettes. They prayed over the spot. Nadine’s pirouettes never faltered.
    Mother. Nadine’s fiercest partisan and sternest critic. What a life she’d led. Raising a child alone in Paris after the Revolution, struggling to find a way to let her dark-haired Nadine study the dance.
    Over the years, mother had accompanied daughter as she toured the world. Acting as dresser, laundress, cook, and chaperone, Mother had loved to play poker, believed in fortune-telling, faith-healing and, most of all, in Nadine.
    “I didn’t disappoint you, Mother.” Nadine murmured the words aloud. It was a distinguished career. Dancing first with the Ballet Russe, followed by the American Ballet Theater for Balanchine, then dancing and acting in several motion pictures, and then, in an ironic turn of events, marriage to a man who had brought her back to Russia as the wife of a diplomat.
    She’d been unable to have children of her own. But they’d adopted a beautiful Russian child. Victor. She wished her grown son was as smart as he was good-looking.
    Nadine’s had been an interesting life, and though she was all too aware that she was in its final act, she felt an excitement as she held both halves of the crescent brooch. It had been a long time since she’d felt this way.
    Life, even at this stage, continued to surprise. There was satisfaction in the knowledge that things eventually did come around, if one waited long enough.
    Nadine knew who had owned the jeweled pin and believed the possessor to be long dead. But perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps her father was still alive!
    No, that couldn’t be. Her father would be over a hundred years old.
    She rose from her chair and walked to the antique walnut secretary. Opening the paneled doors at the top, she felt beneath the shelf for the button. Pushing it, a small concealed drawer on the side of the secretary slid open. Nadine felt among the contents and gingerly lifted a small packet of letters, yellowed and flaking with age.
    Yet again, she began to read the fading Cyrillic script.
     
My darling Nadjia
. . .
The days pass—slowly, achingly, and I long for you, my dearest one
.
Why did you go? How could you leave me
?
And yet I know the answer. St. Petersburg is a bitter, living hell and you were right to get out when you had the chance
.
Oh, my Nadjia, how I wish we were together. And how I pray we will be reunited someday
.
Until then, my