The church was set in a nondescript white-walled, red-roofed building with only a cross on top indicating its purpose. Inside was another story: the walls were crammed with gold-framed paintings of saints, while golden chandeliers and gaudy incense burners hung from the ceiling. It smelled chokingly sweet and musky. Val looked around, shivering in the unheated interior. A young man in a white robe approached her.

“I’m looking for Father Methodius,” she said.

“You’ll find him at the residence down the street,” he told her, giving the address.

She walked along with the park on her left, houses on the right, until she found the place and rang the bell. It took several minutes before she heard movement in the hall and the door was opened by the old man she remembered. He wore a black cassock but without the embroidered chasuble he had donned for her father’s funeral service. Although he did not seem overweight, his belly protruded under the loose garment. Straggly gray hair hung loose around his shoulders, and thick black-rimmed spectacles were balanced on his nose.

“Val Scott,” he said straightaway, smiling and extending his hand. “Please come in.”

“What a great memory you have!” she exclaimed. They had only met a couple of times since she was an adult, and she had looked quite different as a child.

He walked slowly down the hall, leaning on a walking stick, and led her into a small lounge. Venetian blinds let in stripes of light, but the corners of the room were in shadow. He lowered himself into an armchair and gestured for Val to sit on a low sofa.

“I’m delighted to see you,” he said. “I’ve often thought about you and hoped your life was going well.”

She made a snap decision not to tell him about her divorce; she didn’t want a lecture on the sacrament of marriage. “It’s not bad. I’m just back from a trip to the Soviet Union, where I did some digging into Dad’s background, but it raised more questions than it answered. I wondered—”

“You wondered if I could help fill in the gaps?” He smiled. “I had a feeling you might come to me one day. Your father led a complicated life and he made many poor decisions, but he was a devout man of great faith. I always welcomed his company.”

“Did he tell you much about his past, before he left Russia?”

Father Methodius pushed the spectacles up his nose and they glinted in a beam of sunlight. “I expect you want to know about the Romanovs, don’t you?”

Val was startled.

“Let me ask my housekeeper for a pot of tea and I’ll tell you all I know.”

* * *

The tea came with a plate of cookies topped with flaked almonds. Val took one and bit into it.

“Mmm. These are good.”