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***

Zhenya doesn’t speak for the first twenty minutes of the drive home.

The lake slides past on our left, flat and gray. She drives a little too fast, just over the limit the way Papa used to, with one hand at the top of the wheel and her jaw set.

“He knew,” she says finally. “He knew I’d try. That’s what the sealed schedule is. It’s for me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Evaria.” She laughs, but it’s brittle and hollow. “Arina was never going to refuse. Not really. You aren’t going to refuse. Galana’s terrified of her own shadow and Milana would marry a lamppost if it had good shoes.” She grips the wheel tighter. “There’s only one of us he’d have to hide it from.”

I don’t have an answer for that. So I reach across and put my hand on her arm, and leave it there.

We drive another mile. Then she says, without looking at me, “The truck windows were fogged.”

My whole face goes hot.

“Galana’s lamp keeps me awake,” she says. “I looked out at half past one. You were in his truck for forty minutes.”

“Zhenya...”

“Did he...”

“No.” I say it fast and firm. “No. He didn’t do anything I didn’t want. I was the one who...” I stop. I start again. “It was me. I decided.”

Zhenya glances at me. Then back at the road.

Then, to my complete astonishment, she starts to laugh. A real laugh this time. It cracks out of her like something breaking open, and she has to wipe her eyes with the heel of her hand.

“In the driveway,” she says. “With Papa’s and Garick’s men at the gate. You. Who apologizes to furniture when you bump into it.”

I frown. “I don’t do that.”

“You did it last week. To the hall table. I heard you.”

I put my hands over my face. She laughs harder.

When she finally stops, the quiet that follows is softer than before.

“Are you going to marry him?” she asks.

I watch the lake for a long time. The gray water. The gulls riding the wind.

“I don’t think I have a choice,” I say.

I wait for her to argue. For a list of facts in that flat, terrible, train-timetable voice. She doesn’t.

“Arina is going to marry Garick,” she says quietly. “Galana is meeting the Reznikov cousin on Saturday. Milana painted her toenails but swears it wasn’t for Lukan Brovin.”

I look at her profile. At the tight line of her mouth and the shadows under her eyes that weren’t there a week ago. I want to ask about the name Viktor read for her in his office. The one she wrote down and hasn’t spoken out loud since.

I don’t. She’d only change the subject. And I’ve learned from Theo that some ugly truths need to come in their own time.

***

Arina comes home at three.

Garick’s car drops her at the gate. She walks up the drive in a man’s gray sweatshirt that comes down to her thighs and a pair of jeans I recognize as her own, which means someone fetched them from her apartment this morning.