I blink. “What makes you say that?”
“I can see it in your face. You look guilty.”
I grimace and pass a hand over my eyes. “You’re imagining things. Well, f**k. No, you’re not. Yes, I’m going to tell you something you won’t like very much. I’m… I’m leaving today, dorogaya. I have to go back home and take care of some business.”
Isla folds her arms over her chest. “I knew it,” is all she says. She’s angry, just like her mother. Then it melts and her lip quivers. “I don’t want you to go.”
I sit down on the edge of her bed and cup her foot through the blankets. “I don’t want to go either,” I tell her, and I’ve never meant it more. “But I have to.”
She sighs. “It’s not going to be the same without you.”
“You have your mother.” Isla shrugs petulantly, and I lower myself to her eye level. “
