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“Yes,” he says. “Every day. Yes.”

He reaches across the cab and pulls me into him, Papa’s coat and picture books and all, and kisses me so hard the bag tips over and The Very Busy Spider slides under the seat.

When we finally come up for air, the windows are fogged again.

“My sisters are going to see,” I murmur against his mouth.

“Let them.”

***

The Nevolin house is exactly how I imagined it.

It’s a big stone place in Lincoln Park with clipped hedges and a black front door. Not one single thing is out of place. The hallway smells of floor polish and lilies. There are no shoes by the door. No coats on the banister. There’s a grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs, ticking loudly into the silence.

Nobody has ever shouted in this house, I think. Nobody has ever slammed a door, or thrown toast, or sat on the parquet floor painting their toenails.

Theo stands beside me with his hand at the small of my back. He hasn’t taken it away since we got out of the truck.

Kira arrives two minutes after us, with Anton and the children. Mila charges straight past her grandmother in the doorway to wrap herself around Theo’s leg. Then she sees me, and stops dead, and stares.

“Are you the wife?” she asks.

“I’m going to be,” I tell her. “I got your daisy. I kept it in a book.”

She considers this very seriously. “Okay,” she says, and holds her arms up to be lifted. Theo swings her onto his hip without looking, the way other men pick up their keys.

Theo’s mother, Emmaline, is small and slim and fair, with Kira’s brown eyes and her hands folded in front of her. She doesn’t speak much. But when Anton passes Pasha into her arms in the hallway, her whole face changes, and she holds him against her shoulder like something she’s been waiting for, for a very long time.

She looks at Theo over the baby’s head. Just for a second.

He looks back at her. Neither of them says a word.

Then Richardu Nevolin comes out of his study, and the temperature of the whole house drops.

“Evaria Maximova,” he says. He takes my hand in both of his. They’re cool and dry. “Welcome. We’re so very pleased to welcome you into our home.”

“Thank you for having me,” I say.

I smile. My resting murder face is completely gone. I am warm and polite and the very picture of the softest Maximova, and I feel Theo go very rigid beside me.

He has no idea what I’m going to do.

Neither does his father.

***

Dinner is served in a room with a table long enough for twenty. There are eight of us, nine counting Pasha in his high chair, all crowded up at one end like we’ve been marooned there.

Richardu sits at the head. I’m on his right. Theo’s beside me. Kira and Anton sit across from us, and Mila sits on a cushion beside her mother, looking at the silverware like she’s never seen so much of it in her life.

The food is beautiful, but nobody eats much of it.

Richardu waits until the second course before he begins.

“Such a terrible time for your family,” he says. “Your poor father. And that business at the docks.” He shakes his head sorrowfully. “One hears things.”

“One does,” I agree.