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On Tuesdays, I cook at St. Nicholas.

The church hall serves lunch to forty-odd pensioners every week, most of them Russian and Ukrainian widows who complain about everything and come back anyway. I’ve been doing it since I was nineteen. Today it’s beef stroganoff for forty-six, and Mrs. Danilova tells me the mushrooms are cut too thick, and then has seconds.

It’s the most normal three hours I’ve had since the funeral.

By the time I’ve scrubbed the last pot and driven home, it’s nearly four. The sky’s already going dark at the edges. I turn into our road, past the Hendersons’ maple, and the black SUV is still there. I’ve stopped being frightened of it. Now I give the man inside a little wave every time I pass.

He waves back today. That’s new.

Then I pull up at the gate and see the vans.

There are two of them, white and unmarked, parked on the gravel by the front steps. A man I’ve never seen before is up a ladder by the front door, unscrewing the camera bracket. Another one is carrying a coil of cable through the hallway. Garick’s man Kolya is at the gate, but there are three more men beside him I don’t recognize, in dark jackets, watching the street.

I sit in the car with the engine off and my hands on the wheel.

Then I go inside.

There’s a stranger in my kitchen.

He’s kneeling by the back door, fitting a new lock. My knife block has been moved off the counter to make room for his toolbox. The tea towels are on the floor. There’s a smear of black grease on the doorframe Papa painted himself the summer before Mama died.

“Excuse me,” I say.

He looks up. “Ma’am.”

“What are you doing?”

“Mr. Reznikov’s orders, ma’am. New locks on all the external doors. And internal.”

“Internal?”

“Bedrooms, ma’am.” He scratches his bald head.

I stand there for a moment, holding my handbag.

Papa took the locks off our bedroom doors when I was fifteen. I’d shut myself in the bathroom for six hours because a boy named Danny Kowalczyk had kissed Eva at a party instead of me. Papa got the door open with a screwdriver, and the next morning there wasn’t a lock left on any door in the house except his.

Nine years. And a man I met on Saturday is putting them back.

“Where is Mr. Reznikov?” I ask.

“Study, ma’am.”

Papa’s study door is half open. I can hear voices before I get there. Caleb’s low, steady one. Arina’s, sharp. And another man’s, deep and calm, that I recognize after a second as Garick Lazovski.

I stop outside the door.

“...Brenner’s the only name we have,” Caleb’s saying. “But he’s not working alone. Somebody paid him.”

“Rusakov,” Arina says.

“Probably. I don’t have proof yet.”

“How long has the house been exposed?” Garick asks.

“Since May, at least. Possibly longer.”

There’s a pause.