“This is an official request from an investigator, do you understand? I’m not a relative. I’m calling on behalf of a public official.”

The woman chuckled and coughed.

“The investigator can come in person then. Or send a query by mail.”

“Mail?”

“Yes, mail. Via the Ukrainian postal service.”

Maria hung up.

The crow squawked loudly and watched her as it hopped from branch to branch.

“And what do you want?” said Maria, before heading off to the subway.

Better not to mention the planned trip to Kyiv. Andrei would be livid, and Mum would nag.

Maybe this new letter might shed some light. Once everybody had gone to sleep, she took it out of the drawer with a blend of relief and irritation. She desperately wanted to sleep, but she knew that if she lay in bed, the unread letter would keep her from slumber. Then again, she wouldn’t be able to sleep after reading the letter either.

The letters were arriving with a lag, which meant Monday’s must have been sent on Thursday or even Wednesday. She tried not to think of the night ahead as she opened the envelope. That familiar premonition of wasted time.

She took out the letter, unfolded it, read the first line, and put it aside. She went to Tykhon’s room to see how he was sleeping. Deep love and tenderness, all of a piece with fatigue and sleeplessness. One day he would grow up and leave her too. But now, as he slept, he belonged to her.

When he was born, swollen and sickly, her mother called him her “little courgette.” She’d peer into his cot and lift his eyelids to see that he had eyeballs. She’d laugh: my little courgette grandson.

Maria sighed and returned to the kitchen. Grownups only get to live once their children fall asleep. And from his birth until he turned three, Tykhon slept dismally. For his first two years, Maria did not get a decent night’s sleep once and she was never at ease.

Even after he learned to express his desires in short, sweet, mangled phrases, neither he nor anybody else was able to explain why he would wake up five, six, or, when things were really bad, ten times a night. He would shatter the silence with a plaintive wail, never opening his eyes. Sometimes Maria imagined he just wanted to make sure she was there. Or perhaps it was revenge for throwing him into this world. She got up, went to his cot, offered him a pacifier: “Mummy’s here, hush, hush” He turned in his cot, gradually stopped crying, whimpered, and fell back to sleep. She went back to bed but was afraid to close her eyes. There was nothing worse than waking in the dark to his screams. She developed an ability to detect his every movement, every whimper. At the same time, she cultivated a fear she’d be unable to hear those very same things.