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David Hollander married a witch. (The name is an in joke, begun when she made a vegetable smoothie a year after their wedding and the word slipped out as a joke. David hadn’t realized the sound of it, the connotations, until he actually said it out loud. Yuna liked it though, from him. And later, from Shane. It didn’t mean what the world thought it meant. When they teased her about it in public, they used the word ‘psychic’ or ‘superpowers’.) He was married to a woman who never got stuck on a closed highway due to snow because she knew - could read the weather in the sky . A woman who could catch glimpses of the future in the dappled pattern of leaves on the sidewalk and in the flicker of a campfire. A woman who could see the dead.
She’d told him when they got engaged. She’d been nervous - not that she’d shown it. She’d laid it out to him like she was laying out a war plan. Telling him what she could do and what it meant. David hadn’t believed her.
Or.
That wasn’t true. Not entirely. David hadn’t believed her at the time but figured that she was either taking him for a ride - teasing him in a long term fashion - or she was telling the truth. And while he thought she was probably teasing, he was down for the joke. He wanted to be there for the punchline. And if she were telling the truth? He’d find that out in time too.
He found out which a month after their wedding (held on a perfect day in late fall. A risky time of year for a wedding but Yuna had insisted the weather would hold out). David wandered into the kitchen one morning and found Yuna kneeling on the floor; her arms held out at shoulder height, as if she were holding another person. Only, she was alone. She was murmuring softly, rocking back and forth slightly. David caught her eye and she smiled achingly sadly at him. He put a glass of tea on the table by her head and checked back in a bit. It took three hours before she stood up and told him that he was always his cousin Bert’s favourite. That he always made him feel safe.
Three days later, one of his aunts finally called and told him that there’d been an accident on the farm.
For a while, they thought Shane shared Yuna’s abilities. He liked patterns and was picky. He knew the milk was off before either of them could tell. And there were times that he stared at a wall for almost half an hour without speaking. But it turned out that there was a much more mundane reason for his behavior.
The first time David heard about Irina was just before Shane’s rookie season started. Yuna liked to tell him about the ghosts she met and a woman had come by and apparently just drifted around Yuna’s hotel room at the CCM shoot. She’d apparently said something in another language, but neither of them knew yet that it was Russian. (Just like they didn’t know her name, or how important she was.)
They didn’t think anything of it, after the first time; Yuna had many one off visitors. Happy people, people mourning their tragic deaths, people so incredibly angry it left Yuna shaking, but most often it was people who just needed one last look at the world before they passed on. So neither Yuna nor David thought a sad Russian woman was of any note.
The second time she showed up was on a random evening in 2013. David was in the kitchen when he heard Yuna’s “oh, hello”. He knew how she talked to their visitors and knew how to watch her for how to move around the room to avoid walking through anyone. Yuna had some recurring visitors that she told David about, and probably more that she didn’t. His favorite was a child who’d been visiting since before they were married, Yuna was always happier after the visits. David peaked into the living room to see if Yuna wanted back up - he couldn’t see their visitors, but some of the ones that scared Yuna would disappear if another person was around. And there were one or two that liked it when David sat in a chair and acted normal. (And then there was a preteen that liked to make faces at him and rude gestures - knowing that David couldn’t see. David was more than happy to help.)
Yuna smiled at him and didn’t signal that she needed help so David went back to cooking. After dinner, he caught Yuna looking up Russian language textbook and went on the University of Ottawa’s website to see if they had courses open any time soon. (They didn’t have any immediately, it was the end of a semester. But they had one starting in January. Yuna loved it as an anniversary gift.)
They took the course together and by the Olympics they knew a few words. She didn’t visit during the games themselves but afterwards she stayed with them for almost a full week. Yuna finally got her name. Irina.
Irina was the mother of a hockey player. Which immediately made her Yuna’s favourite visitor. She didn’t share Yuna’s love of hockey for the game itself, but she cared about her child and wanted him to do well. David walked in on many a game that week where the tv was playing and Yuna was trying to explain what was happening in broken Russian. David suggested watching a Russian broadcast, if one was available. Which ended up with Yuna on one side of their couch and him on the other with their guest in an armchair, watching a KHL game and trying to explain icing in a language neither of them spoke.
Their Russian improved and Irina visited more frequently and they explained the relevance of the playoffs and how they worked.
When Ilya Rozanov won the Cup and shouted “for you mama”, David knew who their visitor was. Not that she was with them to watch the cup match. She’d disappeared when the playoff finals started. He looked at Yuna and knew she knew too. Yuna couldn’t see ghosts through a tv screen so she didn’t know for sure that Irina was there on the ice with the other parents and families, but they both knew she was there. They would be, when Shane won the cup.
David wasn’t sure how Yuna would take the realisation that Irina was Rozanov’s mother. Given her hatred of Shane’s rival. When they talked about it, watching on screen as families flooded the ice and only one woman went to Ilya’s side - a friend? Yuna admitted that she’d suspected Irina was Ilya’s mother for a while now. Having it confirmed wasn’t what she’d hoped, but that a boy raised (at least partly) by Irina couldn’t be all bad. David was pretty sure that if they ever met Ilya Rozanov in person, Yuna was going to adopt him. He began figuring out how to change the guest bedroom into another son’s room.
Irina disappeared for the summer again, but it made sense - she was home with her son for the off season. David and Yuna completed Russian 201 and started watching movies in Russian (with subtitles).
She was sad when she returned.
Over the next regular hockey season, Yuna learned (and David learned from her) that home wasn’t pleasant for Ilya. Irina railed against the way his brother treated him. She’d raised him better than that. But their father. That was the sticking point.
They got closer as the season went on. David bought the good Russian vodka and left glasses of it on the armchair that had become Irina’s. Yuna chattered about hockey in Russian and asked for opinions on clothes in English. David asked for opinions on his cooking in Russian and by the time playoffs started, he didn’t even have to wait for his wife to translate - he could tell the air got a little cooler if Irina didn’t think it was right or a little warmer if she liked the smell.
And then it was their turn to be on the ice while their son held the cup. Their turn to watch his drunken antics.
The second time they watched their son raise the cup, something felt like it was missing. That night Yuna got drunk. They were celebrating! They both got drunk on good champagne and victory and as Yuna moved over him, she gasped out that she sometimes wanted something. Someone. And David knew, had known for a while. He asked if she wanted Irina’s fingers inside her, if she wanted Irina’s voice egging her on.
Yuna wanted Irina egging them on.
And that was all David needed.
David wasn’t there when Yuna confessed, in the golden glow of the summer sun. He was at work. But that was fine. Yuna was in love with Irina, David wasn’t. David loved her, deeply. But he wasn’t in love with her. She was hopefully going to be a great lover for his wife. Partner? Girlfriend? Lover was such an awkward word.
Irina accepted and they introduced her to Shane that summer. She stayed home from Russia for the summer. Not for the whole summer, she popped over to check on Ilya, but for the most part, David lived with his wife and her girlfriend. Shane was out of sorts at first, not because Irina was a ghost, but because Yuna had fallen in love again. He seemed to settle into it by the second week.
Obviously he wasn’t as settled as they thought. The next season was rough for him. The Metros were coming off of back to back wins which meant they were due for a few rough years and then Shane had a movie star girlfriend. Yuna was excited but Irina was sour. David spent a lot of time sitting in silence, trying to figure out why Shane getting a girlfriend would make Irina unhappy. (He didn’t figure it out until that summer. Yuna probably could have read it in the swirl of cream in her coffee if she hadn’t been so excited for Shane and in love with Irina. But she was and they didn’t.)
They didn’t figure out until that summer. After Shane broke up with his girlfriend and Irina slowly became happier again. They didn’t attribute that to Shane’s relationship at all. Her former husband died in Russia and it was like a weight was lifted from their family. The air was lighter and it felt like the summer sun was glowing through all their windows. Yuna was aglow with pleasure. Irina disappeared for a few weeks to be with her son and her daughter in law and her granddaughter through the funeral. And they really should have figured it out then. But neither of them were looking. They were too busy with Shane’s injury.
It took Shane and Ilya Rozanov standing in their living room, awkwardly coming out to them for Yuna’s hand to fly to her mouth and make a little squeak and for Shane to look very concerned – downright worried that he and his boyfriend were doomed and didn’t know it.
But then Yuna was whirling on Irina, accusing her of not being surprised. David could feel the pops of bright warmth that meant Irina was laughing at her. He looked at Shane who had a look of dawning horror on his face and then took pity on his new…son-in-law. He guessed that’s what Rozanov probably was now. Even if they never got married, David knew his son, and he knew Irina, and he knew that they were in it for the long haul.
So while his wife yelled at her girlfriend, David sighed and sat Ilya down to explain that his wife was a witch. And how, exactly, they’d known his ribs were injured in the last few games this year.