A MONTH AFTER HER DIVORCE WENT THROUGH, VAL got a call from her lawyer to say that finally, after much argument and following sanctions from the court, Tony had transferred the money he owed her, and dropped off a box of items he claimed were from the safe deposit box.

“I’ll come by in my lunch hour,” Val said straightaway. She couldn’t wait to see what was there.

The attorney’s secretary indicated a cardboard box with “Chiko Roll” printed in diagonal type around the outside. Val was immediately suspicious. She had never seen her father eat a Chiko Roll. He served plain food: soup, meat, and potatoes.

She pulled back the top flaps and saw a dark brown leather traveling bag and a folder of documents with something written in Russian on the cover. They smelled of mold and decay. At least that seemed authentic. Perhaps the contents were her father’s and Tony had thrown them into a random box.

She carried it back to work but didn’t have time to explore further before she got home that evening. After the evening meal, while Nicole was watching cartoons on their brand-new television set, she cleared the kitchen table and opened the leather bag.

The first thing she pulled out was a sketchbook filled with pretty watercolor close-ups of flowers. The artist was talented, capturing tiny details of stamens and petals in a fine hand. The paper itself was yellowing with age and there were reddish-brown stains on the back pages.

Next she pulled out a leather-bound photograph album, thick as a Bible, with black paper pages. As soon as she began flicking through it, she realized it contained images of the Romanovs. There were the girls in their white dresses and hair ribbons in a pretty garden; little Alexei in a sailor suit; several adults dancing in a circle; the younger ones paddling in the sea, hems held high to stop them getting wet. Far from the formal studio poses Val had seen in books, these were intimate family shots. They all looked younger and happier than in the photos she had found in her father’s camera. Perhaps they dated from the years before they were taken captive.

Next she found two Russian Orthodox icons, with gold-haloed figures painted on wood, surrounded by bejeweled frames. She wondered why Tony hadn’t taken them. Perhaps he didn’t appreciate their value because they looked gaudy, but if they had belonged to the Romanovs, the jewels were almost certainly real.