She knows Grandma says this to calm her down, but she is not at all certain she is right. Did Sasha love her mother as much as her mother loved her? Did she love her enough for her mother to know? She searches inside herself, but she is not sure it was enough to keep her heart going, enough for her to put up more of a fight against death and survive. Grandma’s hands are as soothing as her voice, wiping away the tears—for Mama, for herself—and Sasha needs to feel her warm palms pressing damp fabric to her cheeks.

When she wakes up in the middle of the night, she stares into the darkness, alone in her apartment now, the enormity of loss pressing on her heart. This loss on top of other losses is keeping her awake, allowing the armoire to step out of the corner and cast an eerie shadow on her bed. This loss is the most raw and bitter of them all, the heaviest, the most brutal. This loss is as thick as glue, sticking to all the other losses scattered on the bottom of her soul, dragging them up, pulling off all the scabs.

There is always Andrei, who now comes to her in nightmares that wake her up drenched in icy sweat, dreams of her life collapsing quietly and suddenly, like a bank of sand. And there is always Theater, the cruel master of all actors, whip in hand, who didn’t even tell her that Mama had been taken to the hospital because she had a performance to deliver. Yet had they told her, would her being there have changed anything? She doesn’t know the answer, but she blames Theater for being the culprit in this death. Had Sasha been at the hospital, the knowledge that Mama was not alone to face the chasm opening before her may have soothed her heart and made it beat again.