“After she left Ekaterinburg, I think she would most likely have headed south to the Crimea,” Peter said. “And from there she will have gone overseas. She would be unlikely to come here, to St. Petersburg, where she might encounter former palace employees around any corner.”

“But surely she will be looking for us?” Maria laid her head on his shoulder. “She would not give up. The newspapers only reported my father killed. I can’t believe she would leave Russia without trying to find the rest of us.”

“Many families have been displaced by the civil war, not just yours. You can’t live with your head in the past. If we ever hear the faintest whisper of your sister’s whereabouts, I promise we will go there immediately by any means possible, but in the meantime”—he rubbed his neck and winced slightly—“we have a new generation to care for.”

Maria rose and stood behind his chair to massage him. He carried such heavy weights during the day that his shoulders were often tight and painful by bedtime. She rubbed the mass of bunched-up muscle and bent to kiss the back of his neck, then looped her arms around him from behind and kissed the top of his head, breathing in deeply. He never smelled rank, even after hours of hard physical work, but had a faintly musky scent she loved. Whenever she felt anxious, all it took to calm her down was to breathe in his smell.

* * *

Most days Maria took her children to stand in lines for their rations, armed with the appropriate coupons. There was an office for bread, one for meat, one for vegetables, and sometimes she stood in a line with other wives not even knowing what she was lining up for. Some goods disappeared entirely—it was impossible to get soap anymore—but they were better fed than in the countryside. She’d had no idea how to cook at first, but Peter taught her to rustle up soups and stews with cheap cuts of meat, bulked out with potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. She picked up cooking tips from the women in the food lines or those who shared their communal kitchen, and soon she could turn buckwheat flour, milk, and eggs into tasty pancakes, and make jam from the autumn’s crop of berries.

“Didn’t your mother teach you to cook?” her neighbor asked, and Maria replied, “No, she wasn’t very domestic.”

Stepan and Irina developed reserves of patience and learned to entertain themselves as she chatted to the women she met in the endless lines. Many had also lost parents and siblings during the war. When questioned, Maria said her parents had died and she had become separated from her sister. Everyone was in the same boat, it seemed.