She still made visits to community and church groups in the parts of Buffalo that had been settled by immigrants from Eastern Europe. Poles, Serbs, Hungarians, Slovakians, Ukrainians, and others had come there to find work, built neighborhoods with churches and schools and stores that sold traditional food and drink. Most of the factories that had drawn immigrants there and employed them were long gone, and many neighborhoods had changed ethnicities or been gentrified or torn down to make something new. But she had found plenty of people who were descendants of the old owners. Often, they lived in the suburbs but came back to the old neighborhoods for visits.

One night, Leah was at St. Stanislaus Church pretending to be waiting for a women’s club meeting in the school building. She would chat in a friendly way with other women when she could, and as soon as she had a promising woman alone she would find a way to show the pictures of Viktor she had on her current burner phone.

After a number of tries, she found one woman who seemed to hesitate. She stared at the picture for a few seconds, and then said, “The meeting is going to start in about five minutes, and I need time to think about this. Can you write down your number for me so I can call you another time?”

“Sure,” Leah said. “It’s not a hurry. I just wondered if he was still around after all these years.” She gave her a slip of paper with the name “Sue” and her number.

Leah had made similar attempts with other people in the southern and eastern parts of the city, but all of them had said they didn’t know the man. This one seemed promising. Her name was Stella Wizshinski, and she was about sixty, with curly blond hair that she had certainly been dyeing for a few years to hide the gray. Age and living had broadened her body, but she wasn’t soft or fat. She seemed to have done a great deal of physical work over time.

In the next few days Leah let the contact fade and merge with the others she had made in over a month in Buffalo. But then one night her phone rang. She said, “Yes?”

As soon as the voice came, she saw the woman in her memory. “Sue, this is Stella Wizshinski. We talked for a minute a week ago at St. Stanislaus.”

“I remember you,” said Leah. “Curly blond hair—”

“Yeah, that’s me. My brothers used to tell me I looked like Harpo Marx.”

“I hope you didn’t put up with that,” Leah said.