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She’s watching me with a face I don’t know what to do with. Kindness is harder to take right now than anger.

“I’m fine,” I say, automatically.

“No,” she says. “You aren’t.”

Irina is near the window, still in the clothes she must have thrown on when Sergei called. She looks less perfect than usual. Her hair is pinned, but not well. One earring is missing. She keeps her arms folded across her chest and keeps looking at Nikolai as if waiting for him to turn toward her.

He doesn’t. No one says much after that.

The hospital does what hospitals do. People walk past with charts. Doors open and close. Somewhere, a child cries, and I nearly come out of my skin before realizing it is not Anya.

Then Kirill arrives. I see him before Nikolai does.

He comes down the corridor in a dark coat, face pale. He stops near Sergei first, says something too quiet for me to hear, then looks toward the doors where Anya disappeared.

Nikolai turns.

For a second, Kirill doesn’t move. Then he says, “Sir.”

Nikolai walks toward him.

There’s something eerie about him, almost scary. Then he stops in front of Kirill and says, “Did you push her?”

The corridor goes silent.

Kirill looks genuinely stunned. “What?”

“Did you push my daughter?”

“No.” The answer is immediate. “No, sir.”

Nikolai doesn’t blink. “Who was there first?”

Kirill looks at Sergei, then back at him. “I don’t know.”

“Who found her?”

“Galina.”

Nikolai’s gaze moves from Kirill to Galina.

She’s sitting beside me, both hands around the coffee she hasn’t touched. At the sound of her name, she looks up, bewildered, as if the question has reached her from very far away.

“What?” she says.

“Who was there first?” Nikolai asks.

“I was,” she says. “I think. I don’t know. I saw her, and I screamed.”

“You think?”

“Nikolai—” she says, looking aghast.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” he says.

“Can we not do this here, right now?” I say.

Nikolai gives me a look but doesn’t answer. His gray eyes are dark like the stormy sea.