Live as if you have faith,” she said, “and faith shall be given to you.

The sunshine filtered in through the billowing white curtains. Tatiana knew there would be only an instant, a brief flicker of time that bathed her with the possibilities of the day. In a moment it would all be gone. And in a moment it was. Still...that sun streaking through the room, the distant rumble of buses through the open window, the slight wind. This was the part of Sunday that Tatiana loved most: the beginning.

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

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.

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.

Memory - that fiend, that cruel enemy of comfort.

This is days and days and months and years and all the minutes in between, just you me.