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He drapes the towel over his shoulder.

"And I don't talk to my father."

THEO

My niece has decided I'm a horse.

"Faster," Mila orders from my shoulders, her fists knotted in my hair.

"Horses don't go faster indoors,” I say.

"This horse does."

I jog the length of Saoirse Orlov's back terrace with a three-year-old bouncing on my neck, shrieking like I'm carrying her into battle. Six other children chase us, none of them mine and half of them I still can't name. Someone's dog joins in. Someone's husband shouts at the dog. They do this once a month, get together for a huge family banquet. Because calling it a dinner would be a disservice.

It's twenty past one on a Sunday. Yesterday, I watched them bury Yaroslav Maximov from the back of the crowd. In four hours, I’m to meet the woman he told me to marry.

I'm not thinking about that right now, because I'm a horse.

"Theo." Kira's voice cuts across the terrace. "If she throws up on you, you're cleaning it."

"She won't throw up."

"She had two helpings of pudding."

I slow to a trot.

My sister is sitting at the long table under the pergola with her feet on a second chair, one hand resting on the curve of her stomach and the other holding a glass of something orange. Her son is asleep against her shoulder. Pasha is fourteen months old, and asleep is the only time he's ever still.

Anton sits beside her. He's not eating. He's watching her and the baby, the way he always is, like somebody might try to take them off him between courses.

I lift Mila off my shoulders and set her down on the flagstones. She immediately runs back toward the lawn, where Lorcan has found a stick.

"Your hair," Kira says.

I put a hand up. It's standing on end where Mila used it as reins.

"Leave it," Anton says. "It's an improvement."

I sit down across from them with a grin. Anton pushes a plate of lamb toward me without looking. He's fed me at every family meal for two years.

The first time I met Anton Orlov, he looked at me like he was deciding which of my bones to break first.

That was two years ago. I'd been back home for nine hours, standing on his front step with one bag and a photograph of a baby in my pocket. Kira had sent it to an email address I didn’t know she knew. I don't know how she found it. I've never asked.

This is Mila. She has your frown. Please come home.

I hadn't been home in twelve years.

When I left, I was eighteen, and Kira was ten. She stood at the top of the stairs in our father's house in her nightgown and watched me go. She didn't cry. Nobody cried in that house. Our mother had already started training it out of her.

I got as far as Detroit the first week. After that, it was wherever the money was. Docks. Doors. Back rooms in places where nobody asked your last name, as long as you could take a punch and give one back. It turned out I could do both. I did it in Detroit and Vegas and Marseille, and for three bad years in a city in Poland I still don't say the name of.

I didn't call home once.

Then a photograph of a baby with my frown landed in my inbox, and I was on a plane the same night.

Anton opened the door. Looked at me. Looked at the bag. And said, "She's been waiting a long time."