"She means well," Dad said.
"I know she does."
"She worries about you. Alone."
"I know that too."
He turned to look at me. "You deserve companionship, Katia. That's all she's trying to say. However badly she's saying it."
I looked at my father. At the lines around his eyes and the grey at his temples and the way he held his glass with both hands like it needed steadying. I thought about all the things I had never told him. All the things I was still not telling him.
"Dad," I said. "I'm married."
He blinked. Just once, a slow, deliberate blink, like the sentence needed to be processed at a different speed than normal sentences. "What?"
"I'm married."
"Since when?"
"Six years, but you knew this because you and Mother asked me who gave me the ring and who was responsible for my preg
