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It’s Emmaline.

She hasn’t said a word all evening. She’s standing at the far end of the table with Pasha on her hip, and she’s looking at her husband with an expression I can’t read.

“Sit down,” she says. “You’re frightening the children.”

For a long moment, nobody moves.

Then Theo lets go of his father’s arm. Richardu straightens slowly. He adjusts the cuff of his shirt, very precisely, where Theo’s fingers were.

He doesn’t sit down. He walks out of the dining room, and a moment later we hear his study door close at the end of the hall.

Not a slam. Nobody slams doors in this house.

Kira lets out a long, shaking breath.

Mila looks at me across the table with her mouth open.

“You were scary,” she whispers, thrilled.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her.

“Don’t be,” says Kira.

***

Theo’s mother walks us to the door.

She hands Pasha back to Anton, kisses Mila on the forehead, and holds Kira’s hands for a long moment without speaking. Then she turns to me.

She takes my face in her small, cool hands, and looks at me very carefully. Like she’s checking something against a picture in her head.

I know where Theo got that look.

“He came home,” she says quietly. “After all those years. He came home for his sister, and he stayed.” Her thumbs brush my cheeks. “Look after my boy.”

Theo makes a sound beside me. It’s very small, and I don’t think anyone else hears it.

“I will,” I promise.

She lets me go. She looks at Theo for a moment longer. Then she steps back into her silent, polished hallway with the ticking clock, and closes the door.

We stand on the step in the cold.

Kira hugs me so hard I can’t breathe, and whispers thank you into my hair. Anton shakes my hand and says, “You’re very welcome at our table,” which Theo tells me later is the longest sentence Anton has ever said to anyone on a first meeting. Mila asks if I can come to her wedding to the dog next door. I tell her I wouldn’t miss it.

Then they’re gone, and it’s just the two of us at the bottom of Richardu Nevolin’s very clean steps.

Theo looks down at me.

“You were terrifying,” he says.

“I know.” I hold out my hand flat in front of me. It’s shaking so badly my fingers rattle. “I’m going to be sick in your truck.”

He laughs and takes my hand and holds it against his chest until it stops shaking. Then he kisses the back of it, very gently.

“I thought you were going to throw something at him,” he says.

“I thought about it.” I lift my coat pocket open, to show him. Inside, slightly squashed, is a dinner roll from Richardu Nevolin’s table. “I decided it wasn’t worth wasting the bread.”