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“Let me get around to your side first.”

“I can get out.”

“I know you can. Let me help anyway.”

She gives me a weary look that’s so much like her father’s I almost smile.

Galina waits at the entrance. She comes down the steps as I help Anya out, reaching for her overnight bag.

“Where is Nikolai?” I ask.

“He hasn’t returned.”

Anya looks up. “He said he would be here.”

“He knows you’re coming home,” I tell her. “He’ll come as soon as he can.”

I hope that’s true.

Inside, I settle her on the sitting-room sofa with a blanket and ask Galina for something to eat. Anya complains that everyone keeps feeding her, then eats half the toast before I finish putting her medicine away.

Watching her chew, I finally let myself sit down.

For five days, I’ve been checking whether she is dizzy, whether her head hurts, whether she feels sick. I know which nurse gets her to cooperate and which juice she likes from the hospital cafeteria. I have washed her hair carefully around the dressing and sat with her when she wakes frightened and cannot explain why.

I’ve also carried a pregnancy test around in my makeup pouch because I cannot bring myself to leave it somewhere in this house.

Every morning, I decide I will tell Nikolai that day. Then I see him beside Anya’s bed, or a doctor comes in, or his phone rings and his expression changes, and I put it off again.

I don’t know how to ask him to think about another child while he is still afraid of losing this one.

My phone vibrates, and I reach for it. It’s just a spam message, thankfully not from Evan. He has stopped messaging me before everything went to hell. It’s like even the universe is tired of throwing shit at me. And I hope it sticks.

I put it down before Anya notices my disappointment.

I still cannot explain how I lost the phone five days ago. I emptied my bag, searched the bathroom, checked under the bed, then went downstairs to ask Sergei for help. When I returned to my room, it was beside the lamp.

I stood in the doorway staring at it. I had looked there. I remember lifting the charging cable and checking behind the bedside table.

Sergei asked whether I was sure I hadn’t overlooked it. By then, I had spent so much time crying and counting dates that I couldn’t answer him confidently.

I told him I must have missed it.

“Elle, can you sit here?” Anya pats the cushion beside her, and I move closer.

“Of course.”

She rests her head against my arm and asks me to read. I continue with Charlotte’s Web. We’re almost halfway through, but when I look up, she has a hand on her cheek, looking intently at me as if she’s trying to decipher a puzzle. It’s obvious that she’s not paying attention to the story anymore

“What?” I ask, feeling myself blush a little. I adore her so much. Even three months ago, I wouldn’t have accepted being a mother as easily as I did now. Abortion is not a choice for me anymore, and it’s all because of her. The little girl has changed the entire axis of my life.

Then she opens her mouth and says the last thing I expected her to. “It would be cool if you and Papa were together.”

I turn toward her. “What do you mean?”

“Like boyfriend and girlfriend,” she says, then giggles into the rabbit’s fur.

For a second, I forget how to answer.