Alexander, you broke my heart. But for carrying me on your back, for pulling my dying sled, for giving me your last bread, for the body you destroyed for me, for the son you have given me, for the twenty-nine days we lived like Red Birds of Paradise, for all our Naples sands and Napa wines, for all the days you have been my first and last breath, for Orbeli- I will forgive you.

We can’t forget that I owe you my life.” She gazed at him. “We can’t forget that I belong to you.” “I like that sound of that,” Alexander said, hugging her tighter.

We thought the hard part was over—but we were wrong. Living is the hardest part. Figuring out how to live your life when you’re all busted up inside and out—there is nothing harder.

Tania, there is so much still ahead of you. Be patient with life

You will find a way to live without me. You will find a way to live for both of us,' Alexander said to Tatiana as the swelling Kama River flowed from the Ural Mountains through a pine village named Lazarevo, once when they were in love, and young.

Each day brought just another minute of the things they could not leave behind. Jane Barrington sitting on the train coming back to Leningrad from Moscow, holding on to her son, knowing she had failed him, crying for Alexander, wanting another drink, and Harold, in his prison cell, crying for Alexander, and Yuri Stepanov on his stomach in the mud in Finland, crying for Alexander, and Dasha in the truck, on the Ladoga ice, crying for Alexander, and Tatiana on her knees in the Finland marsh, screaming for Alexander, and Anthony, alone with his nightmares, crying for his father.

Please stop looking at me, she thought, afraid of his eyes and terrified of her own heart.