The doctor turns to stare at me through the doorway. His ferocity barrels through the air to land in the middle of my forehead. His body follows in short, quick strides.

“There is excellent clinic near Riga, on Baltic Sea. You leave tomorrow by special train.”

I shoot an astonished glance to Fox, who smiles back.

The doctor frowns down at me. From the look of him, I can’t tell if he’s onto us. Whether this is an act of subversion or plain coincidence. Does it matter? I throw my arms around his neck and kiss his bristly cheek.

“Thank you,” I say in Russian.

And I pray to God to protect him when the truth comes out.

WE SPEND OUR LAST night in Moscow like the first, in a suite at the National Hotel. Dinner’s brought up at eight o’clock by a waiter in a white uniform. Is it unspeakably bourgeois to tip? I’m not sure, but I feel certain I see something pass from Fox’s hand into that of the waiter—a man about forty years old, wiry and stone-eyed—and he doesn’t refuse it.

I’m too nervy to eat much, or even to speak. What’s there to say? We can’t discuss our plans. I try to make conversation about the baby, to muster the kind of relief and excitement I imagine I would feel about this upcoming stay in a clinic on the Baltic Sea, but every word seems so forced and unnatural that I give up.

“You must be exhausted,” Fox says at last. “You should get some sleep.”

“You, too.”

“Going to be a big day tomorrow.”

“Yes, it is.”

We stare at each other helplessly.

“Some vodka, maybe?” Fox suggests.

“God, yes.”

He finds the bottle and a pair of glasses and pours us each a shot. To my surprise, he swallows his drink as swiftly and expertly as I do, and I’m even more surprised when he refills us both and repeats the exercise. I slump back against the sofa cushion and so does he.

“Everything’s going to be all right, isn’t it?”

Fox touches my cheek with his thumb. “Yes, darling. Everything’s going to be all right.”

AT SOME POINT IN the night, I wake with a jerk. From the window comes the murky greenish charcoal of a midsummer’s dusk in the far north—no such thing as true night—so it couldn’t be later than three in the morning.

“Fox,” I breathe, but he’s already awake. His tension prickles me from the other side of the bed.

He knows, as I do, that someone else shares the room with us.