She walked to the window and opened it for fresh air. Her feeble attempt to escape had failed. She couldn’t hide in this apartment forever, but she dreaded emerging from it to watch for real and imaginary enemies.

In a crack between the ledge of the windowsill and the cinder block next to it, a tiny daisy swayed in the wind. Nola reached to pluck it, but changed her mind. A seed had flown in the wind, had been hurled against a wall, had held on, nestled, and taken root. It had bloomed in this unlikely, inhospitable spot, its soft white and yellow bloom challenging the hopelessness of its destiny and the grimness of the place.

She spoke over her shoulder. “This could be either a trap to lure me out of my hiding, or a sign that my message has landed where I expected it to.”

In the street below, the ancient woman with the bound feet was still braced by her young attendant as they headed back. It occurred to Nola that in Ashford’s tally of the communists’ accomplishments these past fifty years, he had failed to name the abolition of the barbaric foot-binding practice, a change that had come too late for this woman.

She didn’t hear Daniel get up, but she felt his heat as he took a spot at her side by the window. She trembled, either from the chill in the air or from his nearness. For a while neither spoke. In her field of vision, she saw his long, tapered fingers rest on the windowsill, an inch from hers. The magnetic field between them hummed, and she had the urge to shift her pinky and touch his. She felt him examine her face, but she did not move. If only he parted the hair on her neck and placed his lips on her skin—

She looked up. For a long moment, their eyes locked, and an invisible string tightened as though to pull them closer. She felt his warm breath and saw his Adam’s apple bob behind the knot of his tie.

But his heart still belonged to a dead woman and was buried with her in a foreign soil. Nola turned and closed the window. There were other, more urgent demons she must stare down right now. A new love—and a frustrating one at that—would be a throwback to the dependency of the past.

Yet with her first decision without Wade, she had landed in a mess. “I shouldn’t have talked to the media about the Dying Rooms,” she said. “It was stupid of me to charge ahead like this—”

“That was a brave act. And it was good that you did it, or you couldn’t have gotten this far and still held on to Lulu,” Daniel said quietly. “Do you ever regret not returning her the moment she was thrust into your arms?”

“Never.”