It was time to leave. I built a mental list of things to bring in five to six weeks’ time, for when we came back to have the hearing and hopefully take him home.

“Do you still want him?” Maria asked me, through Pavel. Of course they asked us this. “Yes,” Kyle and I chimed together, Kyle nodding forcefully, and Pavel didn’t need to translate for her. Kyle added a “da” and Maria spoke more Russian to Pavel.

“Do you have questions?” Pavel translated for her. “About Sasha?”

We asked about his health, his development, and Maria’s answers mirrored what Dr. Gupta told us in the report.

After she answered our last question, I said, “Tell Maria we’ll give him a wonderful home. Tell her we’re so grateful to her for the care he’s received here.”

Pavel nodded and spoke. Maria didn’t betray much emotion. Would she miss Sasha? Or he’d be gone, and minutes later another child would arrive to take his old place. How did Maria do this?

We walked out of the building. The air was crisp with the promise of snow. Feliks was standing by the car, talking to a woman.

A woman with hair covered by a scarf, but dark-framed glasses on, glasses like the warning woman in the airport.

And suddenly I was sure, the set of her shoulders, the turn of the part of her face that wasn’t hidden behind the scarf.

It was her.

The warning woman. Here. Here, where Sasha is. She followed us—from London, from our arrival in Russia, to the very spot where my child was, the child she warned me against taking. She was not going to stop us from getting Sasha.

My rage, my anger, was like a bursting flame.

I ran to her. Feliks glanced at me as I reached for her, grabbed her arm. She turned toward me. I yanked the scarf away.

It was not the warning woman.

Similar age, similar build, similar nose, but now I saw the eyeglass frames were a lighter shade of brown and her hair was dusted with gray.

She cried out in surprise and shock.

Kyle looked at me like I’d

Completely.

Totally.

Entirely.

Lost my mind. I glanced over at him and saw Maria stared at me in shock. Looking for signs of instability, of aberration, of a reason to say no, because they can say no to us and some other family will get Sasha.

Pavel hurried forward as the woman yanked her arm away from my hand, mouthing off at me in a torrent of Russian. I babbled an apology that no one heeded.

“That’s one of the administrators,” Pavel said to me. “Galina. She is in charge of purchasing supplies.” Pavel’s voice was tense with me, but his smooth-flowing Russian was conciliatory with the wronged woman.

“I’m sorry…I thought she was someone else,” I said.