Without warning, Claire wheels in front of me and holds up her hands. I stare at her, perplexed. She gazes up soulfully with her mother’s face, shaped like a heart, fringed with her mother’s dark hair, and waggles her fingers.

“My God, she looks exactly like you,” I tell my sister.

“That’s a blessing, anyway. Are you going to pick her up, or not?”

“Pick me up!” Claire says, right on cue.

“Oh, that’s what this means.” I waggle my fingers back at her and bend down to hoist her on my hip. She’s lighter than I thought, as if her bones are hollow, like a bird’s. She snuggles her arms and legs around me and rests her warm head in the hollow of my shoulder. Her hair smells of honeysuckle and childhood.

“Tank you, Auntie Wuth,” she says.

So distracted am I by the unfamiliar sweet warmth of Claire’s body, I don’t think to ask Iris what she meant. Why it should be a blessing that a child looks like her mother instead of her handsome father.

IN FACT, SOMETHING ELSE nags me, and I realize what it is just before the second intermission of Boris Godunov at the Bolshoi Theatre that evening, where Kedrov takes us as a cultural surprise. An extraordinary and moving performance, of course, in the most sublime surroundings. The bass in the title role is as big and fearsome as a Cossack. We sit in a gilded box with a couple of Politburo types and their wives, who don’t speak English and whose names I don’t remember. Kedrov sits on one side and Fox sits on the other, murmuring the occasional translation in my ear. My agitation increases by the moment. I sit there in an agony of impatience until the curtain drops, the lights illuminate. I snatch Fox’s hand and attempt to sweep him off for a moment of private conversation, but Kedrov steps between us, smiling his emollient smile, and insists we accompany him for a tour of the costume archives.

By the time we return to the hotel, the hour is just past midnight. A trace of gardenia perfumes the air, and a tray of caviar and chilled vodka sits on the sofa table in our suite. How nice. I kick off my shoes—unzip my long evening gown and kick that off, too—drag Fox straight into the bedroom—tug off his bow tie—purr, Let’s do what we did in Paris.

“What did we do in Paris?”

“Don’t you remember Paris, darling? I’ll show you.”

He catches on quickly. When we’re both in bed, covers over our heads, I whisper, “Something’s fishy over there, and I think you know it.”

“Your sister?”

“No. Him. He’s happy. He’s not going anywhere.”