A dim light coming from the upper window looked exactly as it had the day he’d been taken away but he averted his gaze, afraid that it would pull him into the past. That the frightened, desperate child he’d been would return and overwhelm him.

The gate he remembered was gone now and he felt his breathing turn shallow as he passed through the empty space where it had been. The swing set still stood, trapped in the frozen mud of the yard along with a teeter-totter snapped in the middle and a set of climbing bars. In his childhood, they’d still had paint clinging to them—patches of bright red and yellow that recalled the days before the war. Before the Soviets. On rare clear afternoons he’d lose himself in their glow, trying to transport himself to a time when children with homes and families clambered over them laughing.

Now even that was gone, swallowed by rust or obscured by the soot from coal fires people used to beat back the cold.

He pulled his coat closer around his neck and walked across the silent yard, stopping at the front door and pounding on it with a bare fist. When there was no reaction, he grabbed the shovel leaning against the railing and used the handle to hammer the unyielding wood. The fog of his breath obscured his vision as he continued to attack the entrance, years of repressed anger, helplessness, and hate resurfacing so easily.

A light came on inside and he stepped back, gripping the shovel in a shaking hand.

But when the door opened, it wasn’t the man he’d come for. It was the woman who had seen him off more than fifteen years ago. Her bowl-cut hair and puritan style of dress were unchanged, but now the skin hung loose from her chin and her eyes had trouble focusing.

“Hello Marta.”

The recognition came quickly, followed immediately by the fear he had been too consumed to anticipate. Dresner had no desire to inspire that in her and he suddenly felt ashamed. She had never been an evil woman. Just weak. And numb.

He brushed by her, the cold not dissipating at all as he passed in front of a broad staircase leading to the second floor. At its top, the orphans imprisoned there would be hiding in the shadows, just as he had every time an unexpected visitor came. They would be perfectly still, holding their breaths, telling themselves that this time it would be a long-lost parent or cousin or sibling. That it would be someone who would take them away.

He plunged into the darkness, avoiding scattered furniture by memory and starting quietly up the spiral stairs that wound their way up the tower. The door at the top was framed by gray light flickering from the gap around the jamb and he stood in front of it for a few moments, trying to separate the sensation of being there at that moment from being there before.