It was how he mourned now, when their mother joined Papa in heaven. When the last vestiges of normal turned to dust.

She managed to lift a hand, to rest it against his arm. The movement hurt, deep inside. Stillness was her natural state in moments like this. But Lukas needed a touch, so she dug down, despite the pain, and forced one.

She loved him. He knew it. It would be enough for him. Just as his arms around her, though she didn’t need the touch, was his love for her. She knew it. It was enough.

His tears wet her hair where his face rested against her head. It was only the second time she had ever seen her brother cry. For their father. For their mother.

Then, when one ambitious drop on the windowpane decided to use the wind as an engine and slide a slow, painful inch, he pulled away. “Come. You cannot stay here alone.”

Cannot? “No.” More like must. This was home. This was where she and Maman had made a fresh start. She couldn’t just leave.

“Margot.” Mournful. Not for Maman now, but for her.

Didn’t he understand? “No.”

He sighed. And he moved away.

The clouds raced over the city. Slate to grey to white. Lightening, turning to fluff, and finally breaking apart enough for a sliver of sunlight to shine through. She ought to move. Help. Make preparations. But her head was foggy and her throat was on fire and that stillness wouldn’t let her go.

“Margot?”

She hadn’t seen Dot coming along the street below, but then, she’d been looking at the clouds. One particularly swift one tumbled over the sky now, its edges shifting and changing and losing bits of itself to the vast expanse of air around it.

Mutters from behind her. Two voices. Three. Dot, Lukas, the landlady. Three. Three of . . . what had it been? Six.

Eighteen.

Only three, when it should have been four. Maman should be standing there with them. Worrying over something with them. Planning something with them.

The racing cloud covered the sun, plunging the street back into midday shadows. The muttering stopped. Silence, then the soft padding of light footsteps. Too light for Lukas. Too light for the landlady, who was as wide as she was tall, within an inch and a half. Dot.

Scraping, scuffing behind her. Beside her. “There.” Dot settled into the chair she’d just pulled over. One of them. “If you need to sit.”

Her legs did ache. So did her back and her neck and her throat and her eyes and her head. But it didn’t matter. She couldn’t make them move. Couldn’t tell her knees to bend.

Dot said nothing else. She drew a book from the bag hooked over her arm and started reading. With her eyes still locked on the window, Margot couldn’t make out the title.