he dogs greeted Meredith as if she’d been gone for a decade. She scratched their ears without any real enthusiasm and went into the house, turning on the lights as she made her way from the kitchen to the living room.

“Jeff?” she called out.

Silence answered her.

At that, she did exactly what she didn’t want to do: she made herself a rum (heavy on the rum) and Diet Coke and walked out to the porch. There, she sat down on the white love seat and stared out at the moonlit valley. In this light, the orchard looked almost sinister, all those bare, crooked limbs jutting up from the dirty layer of snow.

Reaching down to the left, she grabbed the old wool blanket from its place in a basket and wrapped it around her. She didn’t know how to survive this grief, how to accept what was coming.

Without her father, Meredith feared she would be like one of those dormant apple trees: bare, vulnerable, exposed. She wanted to believe she wouldn’t be alone with her grief, but who would be there for her? Nina? Jeff? Her children? Mom?

That was the biggest laugh of all. Mom had never been there for Meredith. Now it would be the two of them alone, connected by the thin strand of a dead man’s love and precious little more.

Behind her, the door squeaked open. “Mere? What are you doing out here? It’s freezing. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“I needed to be alone.” She saw that she’d hurt him, and she wanted to take it back, undo it, but the effort was beyond her. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes, you did.”

She stood up so quickly the blanket fell away from her shoulders and landed in a heap on the love seat. Forcing a smile, she edged past him and went inside.

In the living room, she sat down in one of the club chairs by the fireplace, grateful that he’d made a fire. She was suddenly freezing. Her fingers tightened around the glass and she took a big gulp of her drink. It wasn’t until he came up beside her, and looked down, that she realized she should have sat on the sofa so he could be beside her.

He made himself a drink and sat down on the hearth. He looked tired. And disappointed, too. “I thought you’d want to talk about it,” he said quietly.

“God, no.”

“How can I help?”

“He’s dying, Jeff. There, I said it. We’re talking. I feel much better now.”

“Damn it, Mere.”

She looked at him, knowing she was being a bitch, and unfair, too, but she couldn’t stop herself. She just wanted to be alone, to crawl into some dark place where she could pretend this wasn’t happening. Her heart was breaking. Why couldn’t he see that, and why did he think he could somehow hold it together in his hands? “What do you want from me, Jeff? I don’t know how to handle this.”

He moved toward her then, pulled her to her feet. The ice rattled in her glass—she was shaking; why hadn’t she known that?—and he took the drink from her, put it on the table beside her chair.

“I talked to Evan today.”

“I know.”

“He’s worried.”

“Of course he’s worried. He’s...” She couldn’t say it again.

“Dying,” Jeff said softly. “But that’s not what’s bothering him. He’s worried about you and Nina and your mother and me. He’s afraid this family will fall apart without him.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, but the softness of her voice betrayed her.

“Is it?”

At the touch of his lips to hers, she remembered how much she’d once loved him, how much she wanted to love him now. She wanted to put her arms around him and cling to him, but she was so cold. Numb.

He held her as he hadn’t held her in years, as if he’d fall apart if she let him go, and he kissed her ear, whispering, “Hold me.”

She almost cracked right there, almost broke apart. She tried to lift her arms and couldn’t do it.

Jeff drew back, letting her go. He stared at her a long time, so long she wondered what it was he saw.

For a moment, he looked like he was going to say something, but in the end, he just walked away.

What was there to say, really?

Her father was dying. Nothing could change that. Words were like pennies, fallen into corners and down the cracks, not worth the effort of collecting.

Nina had spent a lot of time with injured or dying people, standing witness, revealing universal pain through individual suffering. She was good at it, too, able to somehow be both completely in the moment and detached enough to record it. As terrible as it had often been, her place beside makeshift hospital beds, watching people with catastrophic injuries, everything that came before paled in comparison to this moment, when she was suffering herself. On this day when her father came home from the hospital, she couldn’t hold back, couldn’t put her grief in a box and lock it shut.

She was standing in her parents’ bedroom, beside the big window that overlooked the winter garden and the orchard beyond. Outside, the sky was a bold cerulean blue; cloudless. A pale winter sun shone down, its warm breath melting the crusty layer of yellowing snow. Water dripped from the eaves, no doubt studding the snow along the porch rail below.

She brought the camera to her eye and focused on Meredith, who was looking down at Dad, trying to smile; Nina captured the frailty in her sister’s face, the sadness in her eyes. Next, she focused on her mother, who stood beside the bed, looking as regal as Lauren Bacall, as cold as Barbara Stanwyck.

From his place in the big bed, with stark white pillows and blankets piled around him, Dad looked thin and old and fading. He blinked slowly, his mottled eyelids falling like flags to half-mast and then lifting again. Through the viewfinder, Nina saw his rheumy brown eyes focus on her. The shock of it, of the directness of his gaze, surprised her.

“No cameras,” he said. His voice was frayed and tired, not his voice at all, and somehow that loss, the very sound of him, was worse than all the rest. She knew why he’d said that. He knew her, knew why the camera was important to her now.

Nina lowered the camera slowly, feeling naked suddenly, vulnerable. Without that thin layer of a glass lens, she was here instead of there, looking at her father, who was dying. She moved in toward the bed, stood beside Meredith. Mom was on the other side. All of them were tucked in close.

“I will be back in a moment,” Mom said.

Dad nodded at her. The look that passed between her parents was so intimate that Nina felt almost like an intruder.

As soon as Mom was gone, Dad looked at Meredith. “I know you’re afraid,” he said quietly.

“We don’t need to talk about it,” Meredith said.

“Unless you want to talk about it,” Nina said, reaching down for his hand. “You must be afraid, Dad... of dying.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Meredith said, stepping back from the bed.

Nina didn’t want to explain to her sister, not now, but she’d lived alongside death for years. She knew there were peaceful passings and angry, desperate ones. As hard as it was for her to contemplate his dying, she wanted to help him. She brushed the white hair away from his age-spotted forehead, remembering suddenly how he’d looked as a younger man, when his face had been tanned from working in his orchard. All except for his forehead, which was always pale because of the hats he wore.

“Your mom,” he said, speaking with obvious effort. “She’ll break without me....”

“I’ll take care of her, Dad. I promise,” Meredith said unsteadily. “You know that.”

“She can’t do it again...,” Dad said. He closed his eyes and let out a tired sigh. His breathing became labored.

“Can’t do what again?” Nina asked.

“Who are you, Barbara Walters?” Meredith snapped. “Back off. Let him sleep.”

“But he said—”

“He told us to take care of Mom. Like he even had to ask.” Meredith busied herself with his blankets and fluffed his pillows. She was like an über-competent nurse. Nina understood; Meredith was so afraid that she had to keep busy. Next, she knew, her sister would run away.

“Stay,” Nina said. “We need to talk—”

“I can’t,” Meredith said. “The business doesn’t stop just because I want it to. I’ll be back in an hour.”

And then she was gone.

Nina reached instinctively for her camera and started taking pictures; not to show anyone, just for herself. As she looked down at him, focused on his pale face, the tears she’d been fighting turned him into a gray and white smear in the midst of that huge four-poster wooden bed. She wanted to say, I love you, Dad, but the words had hooks that wouldn’t let go.

Quietly, she left his room and shut the door. In the hallway, she passed her mother, and for a split second, when their pain-filled gazes met, Nina reached out.

Mom lurched away from Nina’s hand and went into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

There it was. The whole of her childhood repeated in a too-quiet hallway. The worst part was, Nina knew better.

Her mother was not a woman one reached out to.

Meredith and Jeff met the girls at the train station that night. It was a subdued homecoming, full of sad looks and unspoken words, not what it should have been at all.

“How’s Grandpa?” Jillian asked when the car doors shut and they were all together in the quiet.

Meredith wanted to lie, but it was too late to protect them. “Not good,” she said quietly. “He’ll be glad to see you, though.”

Maddy’s eyes filled with tears. Of course they did; her youngest daughter had always been the emotional one. No one laughed louder or cried harder than Maddy. “Can we see him tonight?”

“Of course, honey. He’s waiting for us. And your aunt Nina is here, too.”

Maddy smiled at that, but it wasn’t her real smile; it was a tattered version of it. “Cool.”

And somehow, with all of it, that quiet, subdued cool hurt Meredith most of all. In it was the change that was coming, the grief that would reconfigure their family. Maddy and Jillian adored Nina. Usually they treated her like a rock star.

But now it was just that quiet, whispered cool.

“Maybe he should see another specialist,” Jillian said. Her voice was soft and calm, and in it Meredith heard an echo of the doctor her daughter would someday become. Steady and collected. That was Jillian.

“He’s seen several really good doctors,” Jeff said. He waited a minute, let those words sink in, and then he started the car.

Usually, they would have talked and laughed and told stories on the drive, and once at home they would have gathered around the kitchen table for a game of hearts or in the living room to watch a movie.

Tonight, though, the drive was quiet. The girls tried to make conversation, told dull stories about classes and sorority rules and even the weather, but their words had trouble rising above the pall that hung in the car.

At Belye Nochi, they went into the house and made their way up the narrow stairway to the second floor. At the top of the stairs, Meredith turned to them and almost warned them that he looked ill. But that was what a mother did with young children. Instead, with a little nod, she opened the door and led the way into the bedroom. “Hey, Dad. Look who is here to see you.”

Nina was sitting on the stone hearth, her back to a bright orange fire. At their entrance, she stood. “These can’t be my nieces,” she said, but her usual booming laugh was gone.

She went to the girls, hugged them tightly. Then she hugged her brother-in-law.

“Your grandfather has been waiting for you two,” Mom said, rising from her place in the rocking chair by the window. “As have I.”

Meredith wondered if she was the only one who heard the change in her mother’s voice when she spoke to the girls.

It had always been like that. Mom was as warm to her granddaughters as she was cold to her daughters. For years it had wounded Meredith, that obvious preference for Jillian and Maddy, but in the end she’d been grateful that her mother made the girls feel cared for.

The girls took turns hugging their grandmother and then turned to face the big four-poster bed.

In it, Dad lay motionless, his face startlingly pale, his smile unsteady.

“My granddaughters,” he said quietly. Meredith could see how affected they were by the sight of him. For the whole of their lives he’d been like one of the apple trees on this property. Sturdy and dependable.

Jillian was the first to lean down and kiss him. “Hey, Grandpa.”

Maddy’s eyes were damp. She reached over for her sister’s hand and held it. When she opened her mouth to say something, no words came out.

Dad reached up a mottled, shaking hand and pressed it to her cheek. “No crying, princess.”

Maddy wiped her eyes and nodded.

Dad tried to sit up. Meredith went to his bedside to help him. She fluffed and arranged the pillows behind him.

Coughing hard, he said, “We’re all here.” Then he looked at Mom. “It’s time, Anya.”

“No,” Mom said evenly.

“You promised,” he said.

Meredith felt something swirling about the room like smoke. She glanced at Nina, who nodded. So she felt it, too.

“Now,” Dad said with a sternness that Meredith had never heard before.

Mom folded beneath that command, just sank into the rocking chair.

Meredith barely had time to process the stunning capitulation when her father spoke again.

“Your mother has agreed to tell us one of her fairy tales. After all these years. Like she used to.”

He looked at Mom; his smile was so loving it broke Meredith’s heart to see. “The peasant girl and the prince, I think. That was always my favorite one.”

“No,” Meredith said—or maybe she just thought it. She took a step back from the bed.

Nina crossed the room and sat down on the floor at Mom’s feet, just as she’d done years ago. As they’d both done.

“Here, Mad,” Nina said, patting the floor. “Come sit by me.”

Jeff was the next to move. He chose the big armchair by the fireplace and Jillian snuggled in alongside him. Only Meredith had yet to move, and she couldn’t seem to make her legs work. For decades she’d told herself that her mother’s fairy tales meant nothing; now she had to admit what a lie that had been. She’d loved hearing those stories, and during the telling, she’d accidentally loved her mother. That was the truth about why Meredith had stopped listening. It hurt too much.

“Sit... Meredoodle,” Dad said gently, and at the nickname, she felt her resistance give way. Woodenly, she crossed the room and sat on the Oriental rug, as far away from her mother as possible.

In the rocking chair, Mom sat very still, her gnarled hands tented in her lap. “Her name is Vera and she is a poor peasant girl. A nobody. Not that she knows this, of course. No one so young can know such a thing. She is fifteen years old and she lives in the Snow Kingdom, an enchanted land that now is rotting from within. Evil has come to the kingdom; he is a dark, angry knight who wants to destroy it all.”

Meredith felt a chill move through her. She remembered suddenly how it once had been: Mom would come into their room at night and tell them wondrous tales of stone hearts and frozen trees and cranes who swallowed starlight. Always in the dark. Her voice was magic back then, as it was now. It would bring them all together for a time, but in the morning, those bonds would be gone, the stories never spoken of.

“He moves like a virus, this knight; by the time the villagers begin to see the truth, it is too late. The infection is already there; winter snow turns a terrible purplish black, puddles in the street grow tentacles and pull unwary travelers down into the muck, trees argue among themselves and stop bearing fruit. The fair villagers can do nothing to stop this evil. They love their kingdom and are the kind of people who keep their heads down to avoid danger. Vera does not understand this. How can she, at her age? She knows only that the Snow Kingdom is a part of her, like the soles of her feet or the palms of her hands. On this night, for some reason she cannot name, she wakes at midnight and gets out of bed quietly, so as not to waken her sister, and she goes to her bedroom window, opening it wide. From here, she can see all the way to the bridge. In June, when the air smells of flowers, and the night itself is as brief as the brush of a butterfly’s wing, she cannot help imagining her own bright future.

It is the time of white nights, when at its darkest the sky is a deep, royal purple smattered with stars. In these months, the streets are never quiet. At all hours, villagers gather on the streets; lovers walk across the bridge. Courtiers leave the cafés very late, drunk on mead and sunlight.

But as she is breathing in the summer night, she hears her parents arguing in the other room. Vera knows she should not listen, but she cannot help herself. She tiptoes to the chamber door, pushing it open just a crack. Her mother stands by the fire, wringing her hands as she looks up at Papa.

“You cannot keep doing these things, Petyr. It is too dangerous. The Black Knight’s power is growing. Every night, it seems, we hear of villagers who are turned to smoke.”

“You cannot ask me to do this.”

“I do ask you. I do. Write what the Black Knight tells you to. They are just words.”

“Just words?”

“Petyr,” her mother says, crying now, and that frightens Vera; never has she heard her mother weep. “I am afraid for you.” And then, even more softly, “I am afraid of you.”

He takes her in his arms. “I am careful, always.”

Vera closes the door, confused by what she has heard. She does not understand all of it, or perhaps even part of it, but she knows that her strong mother is afraid, and that is something she has never seen before.

But Papa will never let anything bad happen to them....

She means to ask her mother about the argument the next day, but when she wakens, the sun is shining and she forgets all about it. Instead, she rushes outside.

Her beloved kingdom is in bloom and so is she. How can anything be bad when the sun shines?

She is so happy that even taking her younger sister to the park doesn’t bother her.

“Vera, look! Watch me!” twelve-year-old Olga calls out to her, launching into a series of cartwheels.

“Nice,” Vera says to her sister, but in truth she is barely watching. She leans back into the bench and tilts her chin upward to the sun, closing her eyes. After a long, cold winter, this heat feels wonderful on her face.

“Two roses do I bring to thee.”

Vera opens her eyes slowly and finds herself looking up at the most handsome boy she has ever seen.

Prince Aleksandr. Every girl recognizes his face.

His clothes are perfectly made and decorated in golden beads. Behind him stands a gleaming white carriage, drawn by four white horses. And in his hand, two roses.

She responds with the poem’s next line, grateful that her father has made her read so much.

“You are young to know poetry,” he says, and she can tell that he is impressed. “Who are you?”

She straightens, sitting up, hoping he notices her new breasts. “Veronika. And I am not that young.”

“Really? I’ll wager your father would not let you go walking with me.”

“I don’t need anyone’s permission to go out, Your Highness,” she lies, feeling her cheeks redden.

He laughs, and it is a sound like music.

“Well, then, Veronika, I will see you tonight. At eleven o’clock. Where shall I find you?”

Eleven o’clock. She is supposed to be in bed by then. But she cannot say that. Perhaps she can feign an illness and put blankets in her place in bed and climb out the window. And she will need some kind of magic to find a dress worthy of a prince. Surely he will not want to go walking with a poor peasant girl in a worn linen gown. Perhaps she can sneak over to the Alakee Swamp, where the witches sell love for the price of a finger. At that, her glance shoots to her sister, who has noticed the prince and is walking this way.

“On the Enchanted Bridge,” she says.

“I think you will leave me standing there alone.”

Olga comes closer, yells her name.

“No. Honestly, I won’t.” She glances at Olga, wincing at her approach. “I won’t. Go, Prince Aleksandr. I’ll see you then.”

“Call me Sasha,” he says.

And just like that, she falls in love with this smiling young man who is all wrong for her. Above her station. And dangerous to her family, as well. She looks down at her pale, slim hands, seeing calluses from washing clothes on rough stones, and she wonders: Which finger would she lose for love... and how many will it take to make the prince love her in return?

But these are questions that have no answers and do not matter, not to Vera, anyway, for already love has begun. She and her handsome prince sneak away and fall in love and get married, and they live happily ever after.

Mom stood up. “The end.”

“Anya,” Dad said sharply. “We agreed—”

“No more.” Mom smiled briefly at her granddaughters and then walked out of the room.

Honestly, Meredith was relieved. Against her best intentions, the fairy tale had sucked her in again. “Let’s go, girls. Your grandpa needs his rest.”

“Don’t run away,” Dad said to her.

“Run away? It’s almost ten, Dad. The girls have been traveling all day. They’re exhausted. We’ll be back early in the morning.” She went to his bedside, leaned down to kiss his stubbly cheek. “Get some sleep, okay?”

He touched her face, let his dry palm linger on her cheek as he stared up at her. “Did you listen?”

“Of course.”

“You need to listen to her. She’s your mother.”

She wanted to say she didn’t have time for fairy tales and listening to a woman who rarely spoke wasn’t easy, but instead she smiled. “Okay, Dad. I love you.”

He pulled his hand back slowly. “Love you, too, Meredoodle.”

The fairy tales had always been among Nina’s best childhood memories, and though she had not heard one in decades, she remembered them well.

But why would her father bring them back up now? Surely he knew it would end badly. Meredith and Mom hadn’t been able to leave the room fast enough.

She went to stand beside him. They were alone now. Behind her, the fire snapped and a log crashed downward, crumbling to orangey black bits.

“I love the sound of her voice,” he said.

And Nina suddenly understood. Her father had employed the only device known to actually make Mom talk. “You wanted us all to be together.”

Dad sighed. It was a sound as thin as tissue, and afterward, he seemed to grow even more pale. “You know what a man thinks about... now?”

She reached for his hand, held it. “What?”

“Mistakes.”

“You didn’t make many of those.”

“She tried to talk to you girls. Until that god-awful play... I shouldn’t have let her hide. She’s just so broken and I love her so much.”

Nina leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “It doesn’t matter, Dad. Don’t worry.”

He grabbed her hand and looked up at her through watery brown eyes. “It matters,” he said, his mouth trembling, his voice so weak she could barely hear him. “She needs you... and you need her. Promise me.”

“Promise you what?”

“After I’m gone. Get to know her.”

“How?” They both knew that there was no way to get close to her mother. “I’ve tried. She won’t talk to us. You know that.”

“Make her tell you the story of the peasant girl and the prince.” As he said it, he closed his eyes again, and his breathing turned wheezy. “All of it this time.”

“I know what you’re thinking, Dad. Her stories used to bring us together. For a while, I even thought... but I was wrong. She won’t—”

“Just try, okay? You’ve never heard it all.”

“But—”

“Promise me.”

She touched the side of his face, feeling the prickly white outcroppings of a beard that hadn’t been shaved and the wet trail of his tears. She could tell that he was almost asleep. This afternoon, and maybe this conversation, had cost him too much and he was fading into the pillows again. He’d always wanted his daughters and his wife to love each other. He wanted it so much he was trying to believe a nice story hour would make it happen. “Okay, Dad....”

“Love you,” he whispered, his voice slurred. Only the familiarity of the words made them decipherable.

“I love you, too.” Leaning down, she kissed his forehead again and pulled the covers up to his chin. Turning off the bedside light, she slipped her camera around her neck and left him.

Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, she went downstairs. In the kitchen, she found her mother standing at the counter, chopping beets and yellow onions. A giant pot of borscht simmered on the stove.

Of course. In times of trouble Meredith did chores, Nina took photographs, and Mom cooked. The one thing the Whitson women never did was talk.

“Hey,” Nina said, leaning against the doorway.

Her mother turned slowly toward her. Her white hair was drawn back from her angular face and coiled in a ballerina bun at the nape of her neck. Against the pallor of her skin, those arctic-blue eyes seemed impossibly sharp for a woman of her age. And yet, there was a brittle look to her that Nina didn’t remember noticing before, and that new fragility made her bold.

“I always loved your stories,” she said.

Mom wiped her hands on her apron. “Fairy tales are for children.”

“Dad loves them. He told me once that you told him a story every Christmas Eve. Maybe you could tell me one tomorrow. I’d love to hear the rest of the peasant girl and the prince.”

“He is dying,” Mom said. “It is a little late for fairy tales, I would say.”

Nina knew then: her promise couldn’t be kept, no matter how hard she tried. There was simply no way to get to know her mother. There never had been.