Stepan helped Maria to comfort his siblings, cuddling Yelena on his lap, answering the endless questions as best he could. “Why is he dead? Why did it happen? When can we see him again?” He had purple shadows beneath his eyes, and Maria could tell he hadn’t slept either.

When Irina heard that Stepan was going to Bolshoi Dom to collect their father’s body, she insisted on going with him.

How brave she is, Maria thought. None of them should be alone. She had lost her great love, the center of her world, and they had lost their father. The combined loss was unfathomable, like the deepest, widest ocean.

While they were gone, Katya could not stop weeping, but the younger two began to play dominoes. It didn’t seem real to them. Only the passage of time, the days and nights when he didn’t come back, would make it sink in.

Maria watched out the window, wondering how they would bring him. Would he be in an ambulance? A funeral car? Could she risk finding a priest to conduct an illegal funeral ceremony?

A couple of hours later, she was still watching when Stepan and Irina turned into the street on foot, heads down, not talking. What did that mean? Was Peter being sent later?

She rushed out to meet them on the stairs. Raisa’s door closed quickly when she heard their voices.

“Where is he?” she demanded, looking them up and down.

Irina’s eyes were red and puffy. Stepan was carrying the brown bag Maria had packed for Peter. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mama. We can’t have his body. He was buried straightaway, in a communal grave.” A sob caught in his throat. “They said that’s the way it always happens. They couldn’t even tell us which cemetery.”

Maria covered her face with her hands. That was it. She would never see him again. She turned, went back to her room, and crawled into bed, pulling the covers over her head.

The pain of losing her family had been unbearable, but this? She knew that as long as she lived she would never recover.

* * *

Grief flattened Maria, making it impossible for her to get out of bed. She yearned for sleep, because when she was awake the thoughts were too harrowing to endure. Over and over she tried to imagine Peter’s last moments, his final thoughts, the realization that he would never see his children growing up. Had he been tortured? Was that why she wasn’t allowed to see his body? It was her fault; hers alone.

In the next room Stepan and Irina were caring for their siblings: she could hear the flare of a match as Stepan lit the fire, the clatter of dishes as Irina served a meal. She was their mother; she should be doing that, but she couldn’t.