There is silence peppered with static, and she presses the phone tighter to her ear, afraid to miss what he says next.

“Sasha, Galya’s daughter?” he says finally, when her ear is numb from the pressure, when she looks at Andrei, desperately, pleading with her eyes for what she should do.

“Yes.” She breathes in, not to be overtaken by rising tears, to be able to utter what she wants to say. “I found your letter in our Ivanovo house. Twelve years after you wrote it.”

“Sashenka, wait . . .” She hears static again, the noises of fumbling, but now she is grateful for the pause, trying to sniffle away the tears, failing, rubbing them around her face with the palm of her hand. “This is so sudden . . . Please just give me a moment.” She tries to imagine Kolya on the other side of the line, the other side of the world, in pajamas and slippers, fumbling for his glasses. “Where are you, Sashenka? Are you in New York? Where are you calling from? How were you able to leave?”

“No, Uncle Kolya, I’m in Leningrad. In a Party office, using an official phone. It’s hard to explain.” She is glad they are still talking about Party offices and phones and not about Grandma and Grandpa.

“I still don’t understand. I never thought I would hear your voice. You weren’t even born.”

“Grandpa said he wrote back to you.”

“I got his letter. I know he was the one who wrote it, not mamochka. He was so angry that I didn’t return home or die.” There is a pause, and she hears a sharp intake of breath. “What he didn’t understand is that I did die.” She can hear his voice break, and in her mind, she can see him crying into the crux of his arm, the way Grandma did when she needed to hide her tears.

She waits for Kolya to catch his breath. “Is he still alive? Is Mamochka?”

By the pause she takes to respond, Sasha can sense that he knows the answer. “Mama died in 1966. Grandma died two weeks ago, just before her name day. That’s when I found your letter.” She swipes at her eyes as Andrei’s hand with a handkerchief comes into her line of vision. She is not sure if she hears the static echoes of her own sobs or Kolya’s, on the other side of the world. “They are all gone,” she manages to utter.

A minute passes, maybe several minutes, as she takes deep breaths to stop new tears from rising in her throat.

“Tell me about yourself, Sashenka,” he says finally.