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“No,” Viktor says, looking at me now. “You’re not.”

It’s not cruel.

“I just meant…” I stop, because I don’t know what I meant. “Anya talks about her sometimes, but not much.”

“She was young when Sofia died.”

“How young?”

“Five.”

“Oh.” That hurts more than I expect.

Five is old enough to remember, but too young to keep everything.

Viktor looks back at the photograph. “She remembers pieces. Her mother’s perfume. The songs she sang. The way she used to call Anya little bird when she ran through the house and her mother couldn’t keep up.”

I swallow. “That’s sweet.”

“It was.” There is that careful tone again.

I glance at him. “But?”

Viktor’s eyes move to mine. “You hear too much.”

“I have been told that before.”

“I believe it.” He looks down at his glass for a moment. “Sofia loved Anya. Whatever else was complicated, that was never complicated.”

Whatever else. The words sit there, too noticeable to ignore.

“What was complicated?”

Viktor gives me a look that’s almost amused, but not quite. “You ask very direct questions.”

“I’m trying to ask them politely.”

“That was polite?”

“That was me showing restraint.”

This time, he does smile. Then he looks back at the wall. “She didn’t like this life as much as she thought she would.”

“The house?” I ask.

“The house, yes. But mostly everything that came with it.”

He says it quietly, not like gossip, not like he is trying to make Sofia sound ungrateful. More like he is choosing each word because he knows the dead cannot correct him.

“The guards,” he continues. “The rules. The waiting. The way every normal thing became complicated.”

That makes more sense than I want it to.

I think of the men outside the library when I teach Anya. The guard who stands near the garden doors. Kirill appearing every time Anya moves from one part of the house to another.

“I can understand that,” I say.

Viktor looks at me. “I imagine you can.”