Page 27

I wait.

“He knew who killed Volkov.” His eyes don’t leave my face. “Kolya wouldn’t tell me. My father did.”

A car passes on the road beyond the wall, its headlights sliding through the bare branches over our heads.

I already know. I think I’ve known since the phone call, but standing in the front hallway with my sister’s raw, scrubbed hands against my back confirmed it for me.

“Arina,” I say.

He doesn’t nod. He doesn’t need to.

I sit on Mama’s bench and think about Stepan Volkov at my thirteenth birthday party, with the music box under his arm and his gold tooth shining. I think about Arina at fourteen, standing in front of me at school with her fists clenched because a girl had pulled my hair.

I think about how she’s been standing in front of us all her life.

The tears come before I can stop them. Theo goes down on his haunches in front of me so fast that the gravel crunches under his boots. He doesn’t touch me. He just stays there, close and steady, letting me cry.

“I’m not crying because of what she did,” I manage, when I can speak. “I’m crying because she did it so the rest of us wouldn’t have to.”

He reaches up and wipes my cheek with his thumb, very gently.

“I know,” he says.

I let myself cry for another minute. Then I wipe my face on Papa’s coat sleeve and take a long, shaking breath of cold air.

“We’re going,” I say.

Theo frowns. “Going where?”

“To your father’s dinner. On Sunday.”

His whole body goes rigid.

“No, we aren’t.”

“Yes, Theo,” I argue, “we have to.”

“Evaria.” He says my name like a warning. “He’s a snake. He’ll sit you at his table and smile at you and take notes on everything you say, and every word of it will be in Rusakov’s ear by morning.”

I take his face in my hands. “I know.”

“Then why...”

“Because he thinks I’m soft.” I stand up. He rises with me, and I have to tip my head back to keep looking at him. “Everyone does. They all think I’m the easy one. The middle daughter who is too emotional. He thinks he can sit us at his table and pick us apart.”

“He’s right that you’re soft.” Theo’s voice is very low. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Being soft isn’t the same as being stupid.” I put my hand flat on his chest. His heart is pounding under my palm. “I want to look at him. I want to sit across a table from the man who sent a seventeen-year-old boy to break a tailor’s hand, and I want him to see me looking.” I take a breath. “And when we leave I want him to know without a shadow of a doubt that he holds no power over either of us.”

Theo stares at me for a long moment.

The garden is silent. The lamps flicker along the path.

“You’re very sure,” he says.

“I usually am.” I nod as I say it. “People just don’t usually ask.”

Something moves across his face. Slowly, like ice cracking in spring. He lifts my hand off his chest and holds it, enormous and warm around mine.