Why, in all these years, did Andrei tell her nothing about what he had done? Was he paralyzed by the fear of her judgment, embarrassed by the prospect of her condemnation? Did he think she would be harsh and unforgiving? She stares out at the tree-lined canal where a motorboat is plowing through gray water, overtaking Borya’s car, its engine revving up unsettling questions in her head. Does she really know Andrei? Did she ever know him? Why does she doubt him so much? Why does she doubt Kolya?

As the motorboat speeds under a bridge and disappears behind a bend in the canal, her memory springs twenty years back, to Mama on a park bench, smiling at the pilot in uniform Sasha had hoped would become her father. For months, when she was seven, she rode on his shoulders around the courtyard, triumphant of her accomplishment, past the neighbors’ envious glances, so certain that she had finally found a father, so sure that the thrill boiling inside her would never end. It did end, despite her stubborn, childish confidence in the future, despite the fact that she didn’t doubt him at all, not even for a second.

Is this the reason she now lacks certainty in Andrei and Kolya, the two most important people left in her world?

Soon, the Smolny Cathedral sails into view, its pearly cupolas glinting softly against the sky. Next to it in the yellow buildings of Smolny resides the Leningrad Communist Party. The car bounces through the main gate and pulls along the driveway to the entrance. Borya waves for her to get out, and they face two soldiers standing guard at both sides of the door, both holding guns as big as the ones from the classic painting of The Hunters at Rest by Perov she saw at the Russian Museum. The soldiers’ eyes stare into the distance, but when they see Borya, they silently step aside to let them in. She and Borya walk along a corridor that smells of fresh paint, toward a door with a black sign on the front, where Andrei’s full name is etched into a metal plate. Borya knocks on the door, politely shakes her hand, and disappears.