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“Reznikov,” she says.

“Arina.”

“Rusakov’s in Miami. He’s put out feelers. He wants to talk.” Her mouth goes thin. “I’m making him wait.”

“Good.”

“Riddings’s laptop was very helpful.” She hands Galana a bottle of wine. Then she looks back at me. “Thank you. For my sister.”

Garick shakes my hand. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. We’ve both learned something about the women in this family.

Theo and Evaria come next, in Theo’s truck. Evaria looks white and sick and terrified and happy all at once. Tomorrow at noon, she’s marrying him in the garden at her father’s house. She’s brought a list of things that might go wrong, six pages long.

Theo takes one look at the terrace and the grill under the awning, and a slow grin spreads across his face.

“Is that charcoal?”

“It’s charcoal,” Theo says, and goes straight out to it like a man in a trance.

Galana watches him through the kitchen window. Her face does something soft and private.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing.” She smiles at the pelmeni. “I knew he’d be at the grill. That’s all.”

Zhenya arrives alone, at six fifteen, with her laptop under her arm.

“You’re not working tonight,” Galana tells her firmly, at the door.

“I’m not working,” Zhenya agrees, and puts the laptop on the hall table where she can see it from the living room.

“Is he coming?” Arina asks from the sofa. “Your...”

“No.”

“Zhenya, you haven’t even met...”

“And I’m not going to.” Zhenya takes a glass of wine from me without looking at it. “There are nine days left. I’ve got Margaret, and I’ve got a new argument about the trust I haven’t tried yet, and I’ve got absolutely no intention of meeting a man Papa picked out of a catalogue.”

“Papa picked all of ours quite well,” Galana says mildly.

Zhenya looks at her. Then at me. Then at the photograph of their mother in the hallway, laughing in her green dress.

She doesn’t say anything. But she drinks half the glass in one go.

Milana texts the group chat at six thirty. A blurry photograph of a candlelit table somewhere downtown, and a man’s hand reaching for the bill. Running late. Not sorry. Save me dessert.

“Who’s she with?” Evaria asks.

“Lukan,” says Arina with a scowl.

“On a date?”

“Apparently.”

“She told me she’d rather die,” Zhenya says.

“Apparently not,” says Arina.