That brought a bit of softening to her father’s face, anyway. Even the edges of a smile. “Yes. She was already in bed when the commotion began. And you know her.”

Capable of sleeping through the apocalypse itself, they always joked. She grinned and shook her head. “I’ll have quite a story to tell her tomorrow. For now, I think I may develop the last of my film, taken at the sites we saw on our way home. I’m a bit too keyed up to sleep yet.”

Zivon had reclaimed his hand from Mama and rested it on Lily’s bag. “May I deposit this in your darkroom for you?”

Daddy’s mouth opened—and given the dark expression back on his face, he looked ready to refuse. But Mama spoke first. “Of course you may. Lily, show him where to put everything. And perhaps show him that lovely shot you developed yesterday, hmm? Your father and I will lock up. We sent poor Eaton to bed after Blinker assured us you were well.”

Lily nodded and led Zivon toward her workroom, deciding that later—or even tomorrow—would be soon enough to decipher Daddy’s mood. For now, she was grateful to have even three minutes of privacy with Zivon. Even gladder when, as soon as they turned a corner, his fingers found hers.

What a strange amalgam of emotions pulsed through her veins. The light of the first half of the evening swirling through the dark of the second. The starlight of that kiss against the endless black of night.

But through all the wrong, this felt right. His fingers in hers. Long and strong and secure.

“I have never seen your darkroom.” His voice was quiet as a prayer. “I look forward to it.”

She breathed a soft laugh. “I’m afraid there won’t be all that much to show you.”

“I shall be the judge of this. And the photographs you are so eager to develop, of what are these?”

Would he think it strange that she’d found anything to record in that broken neighborhood? No. He would understand. “The glass on the road—so much of it, it looked like ice or snow.”

“Yes. This I noticed.”

“And some of the people we saw. Kira with her daughter. And . . .” She almost didn’t want to mention the other. The one that had shaken him so badly. But that was part of the reason she’d pressed the push-pin and why she wanted to develop the film now. “And that young woman on the doorstep that you helped up.”

His fingers spasmed in hers. “You took a photograph of her?”

“I wanted to remember—needed to remember the price of war, even here at home.” She reached for the latch of her darkroom’s door. Maybe that was why his touch fell away. Maybe.

“Some things, Alyona, are best forgotten.”

Her blood slowed as she pushed open the door. “Who?”