Because It Is My Blood Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Yes, I think Anya’s just come in. Hold on a moment.”
    I went into the kitchen to unpack my bags, and Imogen held out the phone to me. “It’s Win,” Imogen said with a dopey grin on her face.
    “See,” Natty said with an annoyingly knowing look in her eyes.
    Imogen put her arm around Natty. “Come, dear one,” she whispered. “Let’s give your sister some privacy.”
    I took a deep breath. As I crossed the kitchen to the telephone, it felt like the blood in my veins had begun to warm. I took the phone. “Win,” I said.
    “Welcome back, Anya.” The voice was familiar, but it definitely wasn’t Win’s.
    My hands turned to ice. “Who is this?”
    “It’s your cousin,” he said after a pause. “It’s Jacks. Jakov Pirozhki.”
    As if I knew another Jacks. “Why are you pretending to be Win?” I demanded.
    “Because you wouldn’t talk to me otherwise. And we do need to talk,” Jacks said.
    I told him we had nothing to talk about. “I’m hanging up now.”
    “If you were going to hang up, you would have just done it.”
    He was right, but I said nothing. My silence must have made him nervous because when he next spoke, his manner was more contrite. “Listen, Annie, listen. I don’t have much time. I only get one phone call a week, and they ain’t free, you know.”
    “How is prison life, Cousin?”
    “It’s unspeakable in here,” Jacks replied after a pause.
    “I hope it’s Hell.”
    “Please, Annie. Come see me at Rikers. I have things I want to tell you that I can’t say over the phone. You never know who’s listening.”
    “Why would I ever do that? You poisoned one of my boyfriends and shot the other when you were trying to shoot my brother. I was expelled from school and sent to Liberty because of you.”
    “Don’t be naïve,” he said. “Those things were in motion long before me. I don’t have the syvasi . Please. In your heart, you can’t honestly believe that I … Things are not what they appear … I’ve already said too much. You must come see me.” He lowered his voice. “I believe that you and your sister are in terrible danger.”
    For a second, I felt fear in my heart, but then it passed. Who cared what Jacks said? He would have said or done anything to get what he wanted. Wasn’t this the exact technique he had used to manipulate Leo? Telling him that Natty and I were in danger as a way of controlling him? “It seems to me, Jacks, that the person who has put my family in the greatest danger has been you. And you, dear cousin, are in prison for the next twenty-five years. Personally, I’ve never felt safer in my entire life. Please don’t call here again,” I said. As I hung up the phone, I thought I might have heard him say something about my father, but I couldn’t make it out. He really would have said anything.
    In the living room, Imogen and Natty waited for me. “What did Win say?” Natty asked with happy, dancing eyes.
    I looked at Natty. I couldn’t protect her from this. “It wasn’t Win. It was Jacks.”
    Imogen stood up from the couch. “Anya, I apologize. He did say he was Win, and I guess I don’t know Win’s voice well enough to tell the difference.”
    I assured her that it wasn’t her fault.
    Natty shook her head. “That was incredibly mean of him. What did he want anyway?”
    I couldn’t exactly repeat what Jacks had said about the two of us being in terrible danger. I sat down next to Natty and put my arms around her. I would do anything to keep her safe and I wondered how I could even have allowed myself the indulgence of lamenting Win. Natty was the love of my life, not him. At that moment, the love of my life extricated herself from my embrace—was she getting too old for such things?—then she asked me a second time what our ne’er-do-well cousin had wanted.
    Here, I told a pretty lie: “To welcome me home.”

 
    II
    I COUNT MY BLESSINGS
    S UNDAY MORNING, Natty and I went to church. The new priest was an incredibly