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Misha points toward the ceiling. “Make moon again.”

Alexei looks at me before answering. I nod once.

“I’ll have someone bring one tomorrow,” he says.

“Today.”

Alexei gives our son a look. “You sound like your mother.”

Alexei’s recovery room is farther down the corridor, past the second guard post. His office is at the far end beside the security stairs. The medical bay is across from our suite, fully stocked again. The smaller medical room inside the family suite is still there.

“Why keep both?” I ask Abramov when he checks the new door seal.

“Mr. Orlov said you may need either.”

“Of course.”

Sergei arrives with Mikhail and a canvas bag full of trucks. The boys run into the large playroom, spread the vehicles across the rug, and begin building a road between the couch and the bookcase.

I leave them with Oksana and Lidiya. Alexei has missed his checkup, so I head to his office.

The secure screen shows three windows. In one of the windows, Misha holds his yellow car to his chest in the inner courtyard. Behind him, I sit with Elena and Cara at the garden table, with Lidiya’s glass carafe in the middle. Misha’s face is clear beneath the camera.

Another window shows the back of the print and Belov’s message, The heir photographs well. A map fills the third window. Red lines connect the contractor’s van, the service gate, the camera above the chapel passage, and the north gate where the photograph was found.

He lets me examine him without moving away from the screen.

I close my medical bag. “You’re doing too much.”

“That has already been established.”

Two more days pass after we return to the west wing. The new moon-shaped light arrives, and Alexei has it installed above Misha’s bed before breakfast.

Alexei sleeps little on either night. Whenever I wake, light shows beneath his office door. Once, I walk down the corridor and stop outside it. The guard keeps his eyes ahead and says nothing. I stand there for a minute, then return to Misha.

He eats when Irina stands over him and takes medication after I place it in his hand. He speaks to Misha, but his attention keeps pulling toward the radio, the laptop, the next report.

At dinner, Misha asks him to make soup for the one-eyed bear.

“I have work,” Alexei says, reading a message.

Misha pushes the wooden spoon toward him. “Five minutes.”

Alexei looks at the spoon, then at me.

I say nothing.

He takes it, stirs an empty bowl twice, and hands it back. “Done.”

Misha stares at the bowl. “No jam.”

“Add it.”

“You add.”

Alexei’s radio rings.

He gets up before Misha finishes the sentence. “Go to bed, Misha. It’s late.”