But it doesn’t matter. I have waited so long for this day, doubting it would ever come. I cannot lose control now, not when I finally have a chance to make him admit what he did.

I’m not looking for revenge. I’ve not fallen for the myth of closure either. I don’t expect that whatever Shair admits to me will lessen my hurt. All I want is an accurate record of history. I want a truthful account of that night. I want something to mark the graves of my family so that the world can know for certain that they lived and died.

Truth matters.

I step into wide-leg pants and an emerald wrap top. I open my jewelry box to choose a necklace, maybe the one Adam gave me for my birthday. I hold it up against my neck and ignore the faint trembling of my hands as I examine myself in the mirror.

Something looks off, so I put the necklace back and try again. I try two other necklaces. Neither works.

I open the bottom drawer of the box and pull out the felt-wrapped ring. It’s been nearly a year since I last looked at it. It’s been decades since I’ve worn it. I’m not a child anymore and don’t want to be responsible for destroying something that should be in a museum.

The turquoise and garnet are just as brilliant now as they were when I first saw them dazzle a room gathered to celebrate the treasures of Ai-Khanoum.

I was reading myself to sleep one night when I learned that Anastasia’s mother, the Empress of Russia, had instructed her daughters to sew her collection of jewelry, an estimated twenty pounds of diamonds and gems, into their corsets. At the first attempt to execute the family, the bullets fired at the Romanov sisters ricocheted off those hidden stones. When the dust cleared and the girls, unharmed, stood before the assassins, there must have been a moment of divine confusion. I imagine the girls and the soldiers must have felt they’d just witnessed a miracle.

But the girls didn’t evade death. The soldiers moved forward a few paces to kill the girls more directly, crushing their skulls and mangling their faces with the butts of their rifles, plunging their bayonets through their corsets and into their bodies. The jewels somehow landed in auctions and museums everywhere from Europe to Washington, DC. Gems often have curious journeys.

I have carried this ring across the world. When I was ten years old, I’d worn this ring like a shipwrecked person wears a life preserver. Maybe I’d made a mistake in doing so. Maybe it wasn’t saving me at all.