He sighed. “A third photograph has arrived. Hall did not show it to me, but he mentioned it. I know they have kept you out of this too—I am not asking you to say anything about it. But if you would pray that the truth comes to light, I would be grateful.”

“Of course I will.”

But as she bade him farewell and let herself into her darkroom, she couldn’t help the fear that seized her. Because she knew better than most that light didn’t always heal, didn’t always bring grace and forgiveness.

Light could destroy too, when applied in the wrong way. Turn on a light while the film was developing, and the whole batch could be ruined. The truth, when tossed into the world without explanation, viewed in the wrong way, could be just as harmful. It was as she’d reminded Hall when this all started.

The same facts could tell many stories. And the truth, when viewed from the wrong angle, didn’t necessarily set one free.

21

SATURDAY, 22 JUNE 1918

Finally. Finally the crowd of nosy Russian women dispersed, following a middle-aged woman who had just arrived as if she were a piper leading them all from the city they’d been infesting. Nadya had been sitting on this same bench outside a yarn shop most of the week, knitting needles flashing while she kept an eye on Zivon Marin’s building and the swarm of matchmakers whose individual demises she’d entertained herself by devising.

More time lost. Each and every day one of them had arrived before he left for the morning, and rather than leave again when he did, they instead settled in to chat. Blighted busybodies. Nadya had never much appreciated their sort in her own village, where they’d tried to arrange her marriage to no fewer than five idiot men over the years. And she certainly didn’t appreciate them now, when they’d cost her five precious days.

But finally, they were gone. Even the landlord and his wife were out. She’d watched them leave ten minutes ago.

She gave a smile to the other women on the bench knitting or crocheting—socks for soldiers, she was guessing, given the basket of them by their side. She’d promised Evgeni she would blend in somehow, so his brother didn’t notice her, and this had seemed the safest way. She added the pair of socks she’d completed that morning to their basket and then slipped off toward the building.