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“I teach reading at a school on Wednesdays. I work at a women’s shelter on Mondays and Thursdays. I can’t watch the news, because it upsets me too much. I cried at a car commercial last week. I can’t kill spiders, so I catch them in a glass and put them outside, and Arina says that’s why the house is full of spiders.”

“The bread roll,” he says.

I close my eyes. “Who told you about the bread roll?”

“My sister.”

“Of course she did.” I open my eyes again. “Gregor Malekonosh put his hand on a waitress at the Petrov christening. She was about nineteen. He did it in front of everyone, like it was nothing, and everyone laughed, and she just stood there holding a tray of drinks and trying not to cry.” I feel my face heat. “And I’d been holding a bread roll. So.”

“So you threw it at him.”

“It’s the only time in my life I’ve ever thrown something at a person.” I pause. “It was quite a hard roll.”

He makes a sound low in his chest. It takes me a second to realize he’s trying not to laugh.

“I’m telling you this,” I say, more firmly, “because I’m not going to marry someone I can’t talk to. I don’t care what Papa wrote down. So if we’re doing this, we talk. Every day. You tell me the truth, even when it’s ugly. And if at the end of it I don’t want to, then I won’t. Zhenya will find a loophole, or I’ll lose everything and start over.” I lift my chin. “Either way, it’s my decision.”

He’s quiet for long enough that I start to feel awkward.

Then he unfolds his arms and leans forward, forearms on his knees, so his eyes are level with mine.

“Every day,” he says. “The truth, even when it’s ugly.”

I nod. “Yes.”

“Then ask me something ugly.”

I stare at him. He stares right back, patient, like he’s got all the time in the world and he’s willing to spend every second of it in this tiny office across from me.

I didn’t plan this part. But there’s a question that’s been sitting in my chest since Zhenya said the words Archer Avenue over breakfast, and I think I’ve known the answer all day.

“There’s a woman at the shelter,” I say. “Dana. She came to us in the spring with two broken fingers and a little boy who wouldn’t speak. Her husband found out where she was. He used to sit across the street in his car and just watch the building.” My hands are clenched in my lap. I make them relax. “Then one day he stopped coming. He spent three weeks in the hospital, and when he got out, he signed the divorce papers without a lawyer and moved to Phoenix.”

Theo doesn’t move.

“Dana said the man who came to see him told him his name,” I go on quietly. “So he’d know exactly who to look for if he ever changed his mind.”

The train goes over again. Neither of us speaks until it’s gone.

“Does she still flinch when the door opens?” he asks.

My throat goes tight.

“It’s getting less,” I whisper.

“Good.”

That’s all he says. Good.

And that’s my first ugly truth.

I think about Dana’s little boy, who started talking again in July. The first thing he said was that he wanted pancakes.

I pick the terrible coffee back up and finish it.

He puts a T-shirt on and walks me out of his tiny coffee and up to my car. The cold doesn’t seem to touch him.

The rain stopped at some point. The street is shiny and gray and smells like wet concrete and someone’s barbecue. Half a block back, Papa’s men are still sitting in their car. The one who had the sandwich sees Theo come out behind me, and very slowly begins to climb out of the car.