“So, Dad,” said Vee. “Aliens or Christians?”

I frowned, not sure what she meant.

Vee mock-frowned. “Which one abducted her?”

“Oh,” I said.

“Christians, right, Mum?”

I looked at Elsa. “I’m not sure your mum’s ready to joke about this yet, Vee.”

Elsa smiled. “I’m going with militant atheists.”

“Okay,” said Vee. She walked back into the living room, sat down beside her sister, unhooked the cloth belt from her sister’s waist.

“Vee,” said Elsa, “no.”

Vee looked at her mother. She opened the bag, tipped it onto the sofa. A few coins, and a simple gray cell phone like the ones Edvard had given us. She picked it up, turned it over in her hand, tapped a number into it, trying to unlock it.

“Vee,” said Elsa, “put it down.”

Vee scooped up the money and the cell phone and replaced them in the bag. “Also, clearly not abducted, or why would they just let her go like this? Seriously, where do the police think she’s been?”

Elsa shot me an anxious look, which Vee intercepted.

“You didn’t contact them?”

Elsa said, “We need to involve her. She needs to feel she’s an agent in her own life.”

“So, when she wakes up?” said Vee.

Elsa said, “Sure,” and the tone of her voice was easy, but for a moment her expression was anything but.

Throughout it all Licia slept, hands folded across her chest. It was dark inside the living room, but Licia was lit by a single beam of sunlight that passed from her feet up her body as we sat, glancing at her and smiling. When the beam reached her hands, her fingers seemed to feel its warmth, began to clench and unclench, then stretch upward until her palms and her fingertips were pressed together.

“She looks like one of those stone saints.” Vee laughed. “Like she’s praying. Or giving thanks. Or something.”

“Yes,” said Elsa. “She really does.”

The euphoria of it was a kind of madness.

Vee was looking at me, expectant. Elsa too. Vee raised an eyebrow.

I said, “What is it, Vee?”

“You really didn’t hear that?”

I looked at Elsa.

Elsa smiled. “The doorbell.”

“Oh.”

On my way to the front door I paused at the bathroom. I checked my reflection in the mirror. How relaxed my face seemed; how at ease with the world. Such a strange, unfamiliar feeling. For the first time in a year I felt no trace of anger, or pain, or fear.

This time I heard the doorbell.

I stepped into the hall. I buzzed the entrance door open without checking. When I heard footsteps in the passageway I opened the front door.

Pavel.

The look in his eyes could have cut stone.

“You do not know,” he said, “what you have unleashed.”