BY THE TIME I rise from the bath, dripping and wrinkled, it’s practically dawn. Saturday, thank goodness, so I don’t need to trouble myself about work. I brush my teeth and spread the cold cream over my face and find a clean pair of pajamas in the chest of drawers. The air in the bedroom is warm and stuffy and humid from the bath. I open a window and pull back the covers, and as I begin the ascent into bed my toe discovers something flat.

I glance at the floor. Just under the edge of the bedframe lies the snapshot Iris enclosed in her letter.

I take my time examining them, these nephews and niece I’ve never met. Iris’s kids. Their features are blurred, as if the photographer moved his hand at the exact instant of the shutter’s opening. Still, you can gather in the grosser details. Their hair glimmers in various states of blondness, like their father, and their neat, old-fashioned clothes are exactly the kind of uniform I imagine Iris would dress them in.

My finger touches the small, glossy rectangle and traces the outline of a face, a tiny ear, a smear of hair so blond it might be white. A hand that clutches the fingers of the little boy who stands next to her, whose face seems to have been caught in the act of turning toward her to say something. A smocked dress that comes just to her knees, and the plump little knees themselves, and the white socks with the ruffle and the black Mary Jane shoes, like the ones I used to wear when I was small.

My niece. And I don’t even know her name. I didn’t even know she existed. She would have been born in Moscow, I guess, after they defected.

As for the boy who holds her hand—the oldest of them, the tallest. This would be their firstborn, the son they conceived in the first mad dash of infatuation. I always knew he’d be the spit of his father, and I believe I’m right. You can see it in the outline of him, the way he stands, the hint of a strong brow, the probable blue eyes. Aunt Vivian told me they named him after Sasha, but you can’t address a young boy as Cornelius Alexander, so they call him Kip—or did. A mere tiny, secret bud in his mother’s womb when I last saw Iris—desperately in love, her whole heart stolen so that not a single piece of it remained to forgive me, her sister.