Raisa came out to the yard to stand near Maria and lowered her voice to speak in a whisper. “You know his brother was arrested last month. I’m not sure we should be consorting with him. I hope he will lose his apartment before long.”

Maria bit her tongue. It was hateful that relatives of those who had been arrested were instantly under suspicion, but that was the way the regime worked. “I’m sure justice will prevail, as it always does,” she said. “Meanwhile I’ll talk to him about the bath rota.”

She picked up her laundry basket and climbed the stairs to the third floor, feeling exhausted. Raisa had that effect on her. As she opened the door, she heard the voices of Katya and Galina inside.

“Hello, Galina,” she said. “What are you two playing at?” They were sitting on the floor with something glittering between them.

“Look what we found!” Katya cried. “These were in Stepan’s old steam engine. Aren’t they pretty?”

Maria’s shock must have shown on her face. Her heart started thumping violently, the blood rushed from her head, and she couldn’t speak at first. It was as if time stood still while she struggled to compose her features.

“These old rocks!” she exclaimed at last, trying to sound offhand. “I haven’t seen them in years. Your father and I found them when we were hiking in the Urals, long before you were born.”

She bent and started putting them back in the cloth bag, her hand shaking. There were flawless diamonds, bloodred rubies, dazzling sapphires, and creamy pearls, their colors glowing against the slate gray of the rug.

“Can I have them, Mama?” Katya begged. “If you and Papa don’t want them.”

“We’ll ask him later,” Maria said, to buy time. “But for now, please would you girls go down to the yard and keep an eye on the little ones?”

She swept the rest of the jewels into the bag and slipped it in her pocket, not daring to look at Galina, scared of what she might see in her face. Did the girl know that this was enough to identify them as kulaks? That their entire family could end up in a gulag?

Katya got to her feet and stretched out a hand to pull her friend up. She was an obedient daughter, a sweet girl. “Can we have something to eat?” she asked, so Maria fetched her tin of homemade lepeshki cookies and gave them one each.

When the girls left, she sat down hard in a chair, her chest tight with fear. She prayed Peter would come home on time. He would know what to do. Please God, don’t let him get held up.

* * *