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“Why?”

Galina’s answer is quiet. “Because he’s a decent man.”

I look up.

She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t make it sound grand or tragic. Just a fact she has lived with long enough to trust.

My chest tightens. I hate how much that affects me.

I tell myself it is because I am tired. Because I woke up in Anya’s bed with Nikolai’s hand around mine. Because Evan’s message is still somewhere in my blocked list, waiting behind the little wall I keep building and rebuilding.

But it is not only that.

It’s him. It’s always becoming him.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” I say.

“With what?”

“With him.”

Galina’s expression softens, but only a little. “No one does at first.”

I let out a small laugh. “That’s comforting.”

“It was not meant to be.”

For a moment, neither of us speaks. Down the hall, the house is beginning to wake properly. Someone moves downstairs. A door closes softly. Anya is still asleep, or I would hear her by now.

Galina looks toward the closed bedroom door. “Happy children are easy to hurt. People forget that. They think sadness makes children fragile. Sometimes happiness does. They begin to trust it.”

I swallow.

“She trusts you,” Galina says.

“I know.”

“And him.”

“I know.”

“And perhaps herself a little more when you are there.”

My throat feels tight now. “I would never hurt her on purpose,” I say.

“I believe you.”

“But you’re worried.”

“Yes.”

“At me?”

“At all of you.”

I should probably ask more. About Sofia’s parents. About what exactly was hidden. About why Galina talks about the Volkovs like they are both people and a responsibility she has inherited.

But my mind keeps going back to Nikolai.