t was almost midnight when Meredith finally got home. Exhausted by the length of the day and yet captivated by tonight’s story, she fed the dogs, played with them for a while, then changed into a comfortable pair of sweats. She was in the kitchen making herself a cup of tea when a car drove up.

Jeff. Who else would it be at twelve-thirty?

She stood there, her hands gripping the sink’s porcelain rim, her heartbeat going crazy as the front door opened.

Nina walked into the kitchen, looking vaguely pissed off.

Meredith felt a rush of disappointment. “It’s past midnight. What are you doing here?”

Nina walked over to the counter, grabbed a bottle of wine, found two coffee mugs in the sink, rinsed them out, and poured two glasses full. “Well, I’d like to talk about the story, which is becoming pretty damn detailed for a fairy tale, but since you’re afraid of it, I’ll say what I came for. We need to talk.”

“Tomorrow is—”

“Now. Tomorrow you’ll be armored up again and I’ll be intimidated by your competence. Come on.” Then she took Meredith by the arm and led her into the living room, where she got a fire going by pressing a button.

Whoosh went the gas flames, and on came the heat and light.

“Here,” she said, handing Meredith a cup of wine.

“Don’t you think it’s a little late for wine?”

“I’m not even going to answer that. You’re lucky it’s not tequila, the way I’m feeling.”

Nina. Always the drama.

Meredith sat on one end of the sofa, her back tilted against the armrest. Nina sat on the opposite end. In the middle, their toes brushed against each other.

“What do you want, Nina?” Meredith asked.

“My sister.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You were the one who took me trick-or-treating when Dad was working, remember? You always made my costume. And remember, when I tried out for cheerleader, you helped me with my routine for weeks, and when I made it you were happy for me, even though you hadn’t made the squad when you tried out? And when Sean Bowers asked me to the prom, you were the one who told me not to trust him. We might not have had much in common, but we were sisters.”

Meredith had forgotten all of that, or at least, she hadn’t thought of it in years. “That was a long time ago.”

“I went away and left you. I get it. And Mom is not an easy person to be left with. And we don’t know each other very well, but I’m here now, Mere.”

“I see you.”

“Do you? Because frankly, you’ve been a bitch the last few days. Or maybe not a bitch, just kind of mopey, and one woman who won’t talk to me at dinner is pretty much my quota.” Nina leaned forward. “I’m here and I miss you, Mere. It’s like you don’t want to look at me or talk to me at all, I think—”

“Jeff left me.”

Nina sat back abruptly. “What?”

Meredith couldn’t say it again. She shook her head, felt the sting of tears. “He’s living at the motel by his office.”

“That prick,” Nina said.

Meredith actually laughed. “Thanks for not assuming it was my fault.”

The look Nina gave Meredith was caring and compassionate, and Meredith knew suddenly why so many strangers opened up to her sister. It was that look, the one that promised to comfort and care, but not to judge.

“What happened?” Nina asked quietly.

“He asked me if I still love him.”

“And?”

“I didn’t answer,” Meredith said. “I didn’t answer. And I haven’t called him yet, haven’t gone after him or written him a passionate letter or even begged him to come back. No wonder he left me. He even said...”

“What?”

“That I was like Mom.”

“So now I think he’s a prick and an asshole.”

“He loves me,” Meredith said. “And I’ve hurt him. I could tell. That’s why he said it.”

“Who gives a shit about his feelings? That’s your problem, Mere, you care too much about everyone else. What do you want?”

She hadn’t asked herself that question in years. She’d gone to the college they could afford, not the one she’d wanted; she’d married younger than planned because she’d gotten pregnant; she’d come home to Belye Nochi because Dad needed her. When had she ever done what she wanted?

Strangely, she thought about the early days at the orchard, when she’d started the gift shop and stocked it with things she loved.

“You’ll figure it out, Mere. I promise.” Nina came over and hugged her.

“Thanks. I mean it. You helped.”

Nina sat back. “Remember that the next time I burn the hell out of the stove or leave a mess in the kitchen.”

“I’ll try,” Meredith said, leaning forward to clink her glass against Nina’s. “To new beginnings.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Nina said.

“You’ll drink to anything.”

“Indeed I will. It’s one of my best traits.”

For the next two days, Mom shut down, turned from quiet into stone-like, even refusing to come down for dinner. Nina would have been upset by it, and maybe even done something about it, but the reason was obvious. All of them were feeling the same way. As the days turned tonight and moved forward, Nina found herself unable even to think about the fairy tale.

Dad’s birthday was approaching.

The day of it dawned bright and sunny, with a cloudless blue sky.

Nina pushed the covers back and got out of bed. Today was the day she’d come home for. None of them had mentioned it, of course, they being the kind of women who didn’t talk about their pain, but it had been between them always, in the air.

She went to her bedroom window and looked out. The apple trees seemed to be dancing; millions of green leaves and white blossoms shimmied in the light.

She grabbed her clothes from a heap on the floor, dressed quickly, and left the bedroom. She wasn’t entirely sure what she’d say to her mother on this tenderest of days; she just knew that she didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts. Her memories.

Across the hall, she knocked on Mom’s door. “Are you up?”

“Sunset,” Mom said. “I’ll see you and Meredith then.”

Disappointed, Nina went down to the kitchen. After a quick breakfast, she set off up the driveway to Meredith’s house, but all she found there were the huskies, sleeping in sunny patches on the porch. Of course, Meredith had gone to work.

“Shit.”

Since the last thing she wanted to do was roam through this quiet house on Dad’s birthday, she returned to Belye Nochi, plucked her car keys from the bowl on the entry table, and set off for town, looking for anything to occupy her time until sunset. Along the way she stopped now and then to take photographs, and at noon she ate greasy American food at the diner on Main Street.

Before the day ended, though, she was back at Belye Nochi. She slung her camera bag over her shoulder and went inside, where she found Meredith in the kitchen, putting something into the oven.

“Hey,” Nina said.

Meredith turned to her. “I made dinner. And set the table. I thought... afterward...”

“Sure,” Nina said, walking over to the French doors, looking out. “How do we do this?”

Meredith came up beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders. “I guess we just open the urn and let the ashes fall. Maybe you could say something.”

“You’re the one who should say something, Mere. I let him down.”

“He loved you so much,” Meredith said. “And he was proud of you.”

Nina felt tears start. Outside, the sky seemed to fold across the orchard in ribbons of salmon pink and the palest lavender. “Thanks,” she said, leaning against her sister. She had no idea how long they stood there, together, saying nothing.

“It is time,” Mom finally said behind them.

Nina eased away from Meredith, steeling herself for whatever was to come. As one, she and her sister turned.

Mom stood in the doorway, holding a rosewood box inlaid with ivory. She was practically unrecognizable in a purple chiffon evening blouse and canary-yellow linen pants. A red and blue scarf was coiled around her neck.

“He liked color,” Mom said. “I should have worn more of it....” She smoothed the hair from her face and glanced out the window at the setting sun. Then she drew in a deep breath and walked toward them. “Here,” she said, holding out the box to Nina.

It was just a box full of ashes, not really her dad, not even all she had left of him, and yet, when she took it from her mother, the grief she’d been suppressing rolled over her.

She heard Mom and Meredith leave the kitchen and walk out through the dining room. She followed slowly behind them.

A cool breeze came through the open French doors, brushing her cheek, bringing with it the scent of apples.

“Come on, Nina,” Meredith called from outside.

Nina repositioned the camera strap around her neck and headed for the garden.

Meredith and her mother were already there, standing stiffly by the iron bench beneath the magnolia tree. The last bit of sunlight illuminated the new copper column and turned it into a vibrant flame.

Nina hurried across the grass, noticing a second too late that it was slippery out here. It all happened in an instant: her toe caught on a rock and she started to fall and she reached out to stop it and suddenly the box was flying through the air. It crashed into one of the copper columns and shattered.

Nina hit the ground hard enough to taste blood. She lay there, dazed, hearing Meredith’s Oh, no, repeat over and over.

And then her mother was pulling her to her feet, saying something in Russian. It was the gentlest voice she’d ever heard from her mother.

“I dropped it,” Nina said, wiping her face, smearing the grit across her cheek, and at the thought of that she started to cry.

“Do not cry,” Mom said. “Just think if he were here. He would say, What the hell did you expect, Anya, waiting until dark?”

Her mother actually smiled.

“We’ll call it an ash-tossing,” Meredith said, her mouth quirking up.

“Some families scatter. We fling,” Nina said.

Mom was the first to laugh. The sound was so totally foreign that Nina gasped, and then she started to laugh, too.

They stood there, the three of them, laughing together in the middle of the winter garden, with the apple trees all around them, and it was the best tribute to him they could have made. And later, when Mom and Meredith had gone inside, Nina stood there alone, in the quiet, staring down at a velvety white magnolia blossom dressed in gray ash. “Did you hear us laughing? We’ve never done that before, not the three of us, not together. We laughed for you, Dad....”

She would have sworn she felt him beside her then, heard his breathing in the wind. She knew what he would have said to her tonight. Nice trip, Neener Beaner. See you in the fall. “I love you, Dad,” she whispered as a single apple blossom floated on the breeze and landed at her feet.

Meredith took the chicken Kiev out of the oven and set the pan on the cold stove to cool.

Drying her hands on a plaid towel, she took a deep breath and went into the living room to be with her mom. “Hey,” she said, sitting down beside her on the sofa.

The look her mother gave her was staggering in its sadness.

It connected them for a moment, enough that Meredith reached out and touched her mother’s hand.

For once, her mother didn’t pull away.

Meredith wanted to say something—just the right thing to ease their pain, but of course there were no such words.

“We should eat now,” Mom said at last. “Go get your sister.” Meredith nodded and went out to the winter garden, where Nina was photographing the ash-dusted magnolia blossom.

Meredith sat down on the bench beside her. The bronze sky had darkened so that all they could really see were white flowers, which looked silver in the fading light.

“How are you doing?” Nina asked.

“Shitty. You?”

Nina recapped her lens. “I’ve been better. How’s Mom?”

Meredith shrugged. “Who knows?”

“She’s better lately, though. I think it’s the fairy tale.”

“You would think that.” Meredith sighed. “How the hell would we know? I wish we could really talk to her.”

“I don’t think she’s ever really talked to us. We don’t even know how old she is.”

“How come we didn’t think that was weird when we were kids?”

“I guess you get used to what you’re raised with. Like those feral kids who actually think they’re dogs.”

“Only you could find a way to work feral children into a conversation like this. Come on,” Meredith said.

They went back into the house and found Mom at the table, with dinner served. Chicken Kiev with au gratin potatoes and a green salad. There was a decanter of vodka and three shot glasses in the center of the table.

“That’s my kind of centerpiece,” Nina said, taking a seat while Mom poured three shots of vodka.

Meredith sat down beside her sister.

“A toast,” her mother said quietly, raising her shot glass.

There was a moment of awkward silence as they looked at one another. Meredith knew that each of them was thinking about what to say, how to honor him without either making it hurt more or sound sad. He wouldn’t have wanted that.

“To our Evan,” Mom said at last, clinking her glass against the others. She downed the alcohol in one swallow. “Your father loved it when I drank.”

“It’s a good night for alcohol,” Meredith said. She drank her vodka and held her empty glass out for more. The second shot burned down her throat. “I miss hearing his voice when I come into the house,” she said.

Mom immediately poured herself another shot. “I miss the way he kissed me every morning.”

“I got used to missing him,” Nina said quietly. “Pour me another.”

By the time she finished her third shot of vodka, Meredith felt a buzzing in her blood.

“He would not want us speaking about him in this way,” Mom said. “He would want...”

In the silence that followed, they all looked at each other. Meredith knew they were thinking the same thing: how did you just go on?

You just do, she thought, and so she said, “My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. I love everything about it—how my kids look forward to it, the decorations, hearing the first Christmas album, the food. And I’ll say it now: I hated those damn family road trips we used to take. Eastern Oregon was the worst. Remember the time we stayed in teepees? It was one hundred degrees and Nina sang ‘I think I Love You’ for four hundred miles.”

Nina laughed. “I loved those camping trips because we never knew where we were going. Christmas is my favorite holiday because I can remember the date. And the thing I miss most about Dad is that he was always waiting for me.”

Meredith had never known that sometimes Nina felt alone, that for all her gallivanting about the globe, she liked to know that someone was waiting for her.

“I loved your father’s adventurous spirit,” Mom said. “Although those camping trips were hell. Nina, you should never sing in front of people if they cannot leave.”

“Ha!” Meredith said. “I knew I wasn’t crazy. Your singing was like listening to a dental drill.”

“Yeah? Well, David Cassidy wrote me a letter.”

“His signature was stamped.” Meredith smiled at the coup de grâce.

Across the table, Mom sighed as if she were hardly listening to them. “He always promised to take me to Alaska. Did you know that? To see again the Belye Nochi and the northern lights. That is the thing I remember most about Evan. He saved me.”

She looked up suddenly, as if realizing all at once that she’d shown something of herself. She pushed back from the table and stood up.

“I always wanted to go to Alaska, too,” Meredith said. She didn’t want her mother to leave the table, not now.

“I am going to my room,” Mom said.

Meredith rushed forward to take her arm. “Here, Mom—”

Mom pulled away. “I am not an invalid.”

Meredith stood there, watching Mom walk out of the kitchen and disappear. “She confuses the hell out of me.”

“You said a mouthful there, sister.”

That night, Meredith and Nina stayed up late, talking about Dad and trading childhood memories. Both were trying in their way to hold on to the day, to really celebrate his birthday, and afterward, when Meredith lay in her lonely bed, she began what she knew would be a new life habit: talking to her dad in the quiet times. She couldn’t get advice from him, perhaps, but somehow just saying the words aloud helped. She told him about Jeff and her confusion and her inability to say what her husband wanted to hear. And she knew what her dad would have asked her. It was the same question Nina had posed.

What do you want?

It was something she hadn’t thought seriously about in years. She’d spent the last decade considering what she would make for dinner, where the girls should go to school, how to package apples for the foreign markets. She’d thought fruit production and college entrance essays, house repairs and how to save for tuition and taxes.

The minutiae had consumed the whole.

But all the next day, as she tried to concentrate on work, the question came back to her, until finally she had an answer of sorts.

She didn’t know exactly what she wanted, but she knew suddenly what she didn’t want. She was tired of running too fast and hiding behind a busy schedule, tired of pretending problems didn’t exist.

After work, she drove across town to the Wenatchee World building.

“Hey,” she said from the doorway of Jeff’s office.

He looked up from the paperwork on his desk. She could tell that he hadn’t been sleeping well, and his shirt was in need of washing. His unshaven jaw made him look different, younger, hipper; someone she didn’t know.

He ran a hand through his sandy blond hair. “Meredith.”

“I should have come sooner.”

“I expected you to.”

She glanced out the window, at the cars rolling past. “You were right to leave. We need to figure out where to go from here.”

“Is that what you came to tell me?”

Was it? Even now she wasn’t sure.

He got up from the desk and came toward her. She felt his gaze on her face, searching her eyes for something. “Because that’s not what I’m waiting to hear.”

“I know.” She hated to disappoint him, but she couldn’t give him what he wanted, even though it would be easier to say the words and get her life back and think about it later. “I’m sorry, Jeff. But you changed things, and you got me thinking. For once, I don’t want to do what’s expected. I don’t want to put everyone’s happiness above my own. And right now I don’t know what to say to you.”

“Can you say you don’t love me?”

“No.”

He thought about that, not quite frowning. “Okay.” He sat down on the edge of his desk, and she felt the distance between them suddenly in a way she hadn’t before. “Maddy said you sent her a care package last week.”

“Jillian got hers the week before.”

He nodded, looked at her. “And your dad’s birthday?”

“I got through it. I’ll tell you about it someday. There’s a funny Nina story in it.”

Someday.

She was about to ask him about his book when there was a knock at his door. A beautiful young woman with messy blond hair poked her head in his office. “You still up for pizza and beer, Jeff?” she asked, curling her fingers around the doorframe.

Jeff looked at Meredith, who shrugged.

For the first time, she wondered about what he was doing while they were apart. It had never occurred to her that he might forge a new life, make new friends. She smiled a little too brightly and said good-bye in a steady voice. Nodding briefly to Miss Journalism USA in the tight jeans and V-neck sweater, she left the office and drove home. There, she fed the dogs and paid some bills and put in a load of wash. Dinner was a bowl of Raisin Bran, which she ate while standing in front of the sink. Afterward, she called each of the girls and heard about the classes they were taking and the boys they thought were hot.

It was Jillian who asked about Jeff.

“What do you mean, how’s Dad?” Meredith said, stammering, realizing a second too late that it had been an innocent question.

“You know, his allergies. He was coughing like crazy last night.”

“Oh, that. He’s fine.”

“You sound weird.”

Meredith laughed nervously. “Just busy, baby. You know how the apple biz gets this time of year.”

“What does that have to do with Dad?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh. Well. Tell him I love him, okay?”

The irony of that was not lost on Meredith. “Sure.”

She hung up the phone and stared out her kitchen window at the darkness. On the wall beside her, the kitchen clock ticked through the minutes. For the first time, she felt the truth of this situation: she and Jeff were separated. Separate. Apart. She should have realized that before, of course, but somehow she hadn’t really owned it until now. There’d been so much going on at Belye Nochi that the problems in her own marriage had taken a backseat.

And suddenly she didn’t want to be here alone, didn’t want to watch some sitcom and try to be entertained.

“Come on, puppies,” she said, reaching for her coat, “we’re going for a walk.”

Ten minutes later she was at Belye Nochi. She settled the dogs on the porch and went inside, calling out for Nina.

She found Mom in the living room, knitting.

“Hey, Mom.”

Her mother nodded but didn’t look up. “Hello.”

Meredith tried not to feel disappointed. “I’m going to start packing again. Do you need anything? Have you eaten?”

“I am fine. Nina made dinner. Thank you.”

“Where is she?”

“Out.”

Meredith waited for more, got nothing, and said, “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

Dragging boxes upstairs, she went into her parents’ closet. The left side was Dad’s: a row of brightly colored cardigans and golf shirts. She touched them gently, let her fingers trail across the soft sleeves. Soon his clothes would have to be packed up and given away, but the thought of that was more than Meredith could bear right now.

So she faced Mom’s side. This was where she would start.

She went to the stack of sweaters on the shelf above the dresses. Scooping them up, she dropped the heap onto the carpeted floor. Kneeling, she began the arduous task of choosing, culling, and folding. She was so intent on her job that she barely noticed the passing of time, and was surprised when she heard Nina’s voice.

“Are you comfortable, Mom?” Nina said.

Meredith moved to the closet door, opening it just a crack.

Mom was in bed, with the bedside lamp on beside her. Her white hair was unbound, tucked behind her ears. “I am tired.”

“I’ve given you time,” Nina said, sitting on the floor in front of the cold black hearth.

Meredith didn’t move; instead, she flicked off the closet light and stayed where she was.

Mom sighed. “Fine,” she said, turning off the bedside light.

“Belye nochi,” Mom said, turning the words into liquid magic, full suddenly of passion and mystery. “It is a season of light in the Snow Kingdom, where fairies glow on bright green leaves and rainbows swirl through the midnight sky. The streetlamps come on, but they are decorations only, golden oases positioned along streets burnished beneath them, and on the rare days when rain falls, everything is mirrored in the light.

On such a day is Vera cleaning the glass cases in the elves’ great lost-manuscript chamber. She has asked for this work. The rumor is that sometimes the elves appear to those who believe in them, and Vera wants to believe again.

Alone in the manuscript room (in these dangerous new times, few scholars dare to ask about the past anymore), she hums a song that her father taught her.

“The library is to be quiet.”

Vera is so startled by the voice that she drops her rag. The woman facing her is storklike: tall and rail-thin, with a beak of a nose. “I am sorry, ma’am. No one ever comes in here. I thought—”

“Do not. You never know who is listening.”

Vera cannot tell if the words are a warning or a rebuke. It is difficult to recognize such nuances these days. “Again, I apologize, ma’am.”

“Good. Madam Dufours tells me that a student from the college requests your assistance. Cleric Nevin has sent him. Help him but do not neglect your duties.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Vera says. On the outside she is calm, but inside she is like a puppy leaping to be let outside. The cleric has found a student who will teach her! She waits for the librarian to leave and then puts away her cleaning supplies.

Moving too quickly (she tries to slow down but cannot; it has been so long since she felt this excited), she barely touches the wooden railing as she hurries down the wide marble steps. Downstairs, the main hall of the library is full of tables and people moving about. A queue snakes back from the head librarian’s desk.

“Veronika.” She hears her name and turns slowly.

He looks exactly as she remembers: with his shock of golden hair that is too long and curly. His wide jaw has been freshly shaven; a tiny red nick on his neck attests to a hurried job. But it is his green eyes that capture her once again.

“Your Highness,” she says, trying to sound casual. “It is good to see you. How long has it been?”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“You know what happened on the Fontanka Bridge.”

Her smile slips; she tries to find it again. She will not show herself to be naïve and silly. Not again. “That was just a night. Years ago.”

“It was no ordinary night, Vera.”

“Please. Don’t tease me, Your Highness.” To her horror, her voice breaks just a little. “And you never came back.”

“You were fifteen,” he says. “I was eighteen.”

“Yes,” she says, frowning. Still she does not understand what he is trying to say.

“I have been waiting for you.”

For the first time in her life, Vera pretends to be ill. She goes to the librarian and complains about gnawing pains in her stomach and begs to be allowed to go home early.

It is a terrible thing to do, and dangerous. If Mama knew of it, Vera would be in trouble, both for the lie and for the choices that will inevitably follow the lie. What if Vera is seen outside when supposedly she is ill?

But a girl her age cannot act out of fear when love is at hand.

Still, she is smart enough to go directly home when she is let go from work. On the trolley, she stands at the brass pole, holding tightly as the car lurches and sways. At the apartment, she opens the door slowly and peers inside.

Her grandmother stands in front of the stove, stirring something in a big black cauldron. “You are home early,” she says, using the back of her plump hand to push the damp gray hair away from her eyes.

The sweet smell of simmering strawberries fills the apartment. On the table, at least a dozen glass jars stand clustered in readiness, their metal tops spread out alongside.

“The library was not busy,” Vera says, feeling her face redden at the lie.

“Then you can—”

“I’m going out to the country,” Vera says. At her grandmother’s sharp look, she adds, “I will pick some cucumbers and cabbage.”

“Oh. Very well, then.”

Vera stands there a moment longer, looking at her grandmother’s stern profile. Her baggy dress is ragged at the hem and her stockings are pocked with tears and snags. A tattered blue kerchief covers her frizzy gray hair.

“Tell Mama I will be out late. I will not be home in time for supper, I am sure.”

“Be careful,” her grandmother says. “You are young... and his daughter. It does not do well to be noticed.”

Vera nods to conceal the flushing of her cheeks—again. She goes to the corner of the apartment, where their rusted old bicycle stands propped against the wall. She carries the bike to the door and leaves the apartment.

Never has she flown so on her rickety bicycle down the streets of her beloved Snow Kingdom. Tears blur her eyes and disappear into her waving hair. When people move in front of her, she pings the bell on her handlebars and darts around them. All the way through the city, along the river, and over the bridge, she can feel the rapid beating of her heart and his name repeats in her head.

Sasha. Sasha. Sasha.

He has been waiting for her, just as she has been waiting for him. The luck of this seems impossible, a bit of gold found in the dirty road of her life. At the intricate black scrollwork entrance of the Summer Garden, she eases to a stop and slips off her bike.

The beauty of the castle grounds amaze her. Bordered on three sides by water, the park is a magnificent green haven in the walled city. The air smells of limes and hot stone. Exquisite marble statues line the well-groomed paths.

She does as they have planned: she walks her bike down the path, trying to look calm, as if this is an ordinary early evening stroll through a place where peasants rarely go. But her pulse is racing and her nerve endings feel electrified.

And then he is there, standing beside a lime tree, smiling at her.

She misses a step and stumbles, hitting her bike. He is beside her in an instant, holding her arm.

“This way,” he says, leading her to a spot deep in the trees, where she sees he has laid out a blanket and a basket.

At first they sit cross-legged on the warm plaid wool, their shoulders touching. Through the green bower, she can see sunlight dappling the water and gilding a marble statue. Soon, she knows, the paths will be full of lords and ladies and lovers eager to walk outside in the warm light of a June night.

“What have you been doing since... I last saw you?” she asks, not daring to look at him. He has been in her heart for so long it is as if she knows him already, but she doesn’t. She does not know what to say or how to say it, and suddenly she is afraid that there is a wrong way to move forward, a mistake that once made cannot be undone.

“I am at the cleric’s college, studying to be a poet.”

“But you are a prince. And poetry is forbidden.”

“Do not be afraid, Vera. I am not like your father. I am careful.”

“He said the same thing to my mother.”

“Look at me,” Sasha says quietly, and Vera turns to him.

It is a kiss that, once begun, never really ends. Interrupted, yes. Paused, certainly. But from that very moment onward, Vera sees the whole of her life as only a breath away from kissing him again. On that night in the park, they begin the delicate task of binding their souls together, creating a whole comprising their separate halves.

Vera tells him everything there is to know about her and listens rapturously to his own life story—how it was to be born in the northern wilds and left in an orphanage and found later by his royal parents. His tale of deprivation and loneliness makes her hold him more tightly and kiss him more desperately and promise to love him forever.

At this, he turns a little, until he is lying alongside her, their faces close. “I will love you that long, Vera,” he says.

After that there is nothing more to be said.

They walk hand in hand through the pale purple glow of early morning. The alabaster statues look pink in the light. Out in the city, they are among people again, strangers who feel like friends on this white night when the wind blowing up from the river rustles through the leaves. Northern lights dance across the sky in impossible hues.

At the end of the bridge, beneath the streetlamp, they pause and look at each other.

“Come tomorrow night. For dinner,” she says. “I want you to meet my family.”

“What if they do not like me?”

There is no cracking in his voice, no physical betrayal of his emotions, but Vera sees his heart as clearly as if it were beating in the pale white cup of her hands. She hears in him the pain of a boy who’d been abandoned and claimed so late that damage was done. “They will love you, Sasha,” she says, feeling for once as if she is the older of the two. “Trust me.”

“Give me one more day,” he says. “Do not tell anyone about us. Please.”

“But I love you.”

“One more day,” he says again.

She supposes it is little enough to agree to, although he is being foolish. And yet, she smiles at the thought of another magical night like this, where there is nothing but the two of them. She can certainly feign illness one more time.

“I’ll meet you tomorrow at one o’clock. But do not come inside the library. I need my job.”

“I’ll be waiting on the bridge over the castle moat. I want to show you something special.”

Vera lets go of him at last and walks across the street, with her bike clattering along beside her. Heaving it up the stairs, she tries to be quiet as she goes up to the second floor and opens the door. The old hinges squeak; the bike rattles.

The first thing she notices is the smell of smoke. Then she sees her mother, sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette. An over-flowing ashtray is near her elbow.

“Mama!” Vera cries. The bicycle clangs into the wall.

“Hush,” her mother says sharply, glancing over at the bed where Grandmother lies snoring.

Vera puts the bicycle away and moves toward the table. There are no lights on, but a pale glow illuminates the window anyway, giving every hard surface in the room a softer edge; this is especially true of her mother’s face, which is clamped tight with anger. “And where are your vegetables from the garden?”

“Oh. I hit a bench with my bike and fell into the street. Everything was lost.” As the lie spills out, she grabs on to it. “And I was hurt. Oh, my side is killing me. That is why I am so late. I had to walk all the way home.”

Her mother looks at her without smiling. “Seventeen is very young, Vera. You are not so ready for life... and love... as you believe. And these are dangerous times.”

“You were seventeen when you fell in love with Papa.”

“Yes,” her mother says, sighing. It is a sound of defeat, as if she already knows everything that has happened.

“You would do it again, wouldn’t you? Love Papa, I mean.”

Her mother flinches at that word—love.

“No,” her mother says softly. “I would not love him again, not a poet who cared more for his precious words than his family’s safety. Not if I had known how it would feel to live with a broken heart.” She puts out her cigarette. “No. That is my answer.”

“But—”

“I know you don’t understand,” her mother says, turning away. “I hope you never do. Now come to bed, Vera. Allow me to pretend you are still my innocent girl.”

“I am,” Vera protests.

Her mother looks at her one last time and says, “Not for long, though, I think. For you want to be in love.”

“You make it sound as if falling in love is like catching some disease.”

Her mother says nothing, just climbs into the narrow bed with Olga, who makes a snoring sound and flings an arm across her.

Vera wants to ask more questions, explain how she feels, but she sees that her mother isn’t interested. Is this the reason Sasha asked for one more day? Did he know that Mama would resist?

She brushes her teeth and dresses for bed, plaiting her long hair. Climbing in next to her mother, she eases close, finds warmth in her mother’s arms.

“Be careful,” her mother whispers into Vera’s ear. “And do not lie to me again.”