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She sniffs and steps aside. “Your son ate jam after dinner.”

Misha sits cross-legged near the window in dinosaur pajamas, two sticky fingers resting on his knee. His toy cars form a neat line facing the front door.

“He won’t sleep,” Galina complains. It’s already nine, long past his bedtime, but he’s been waiting to hear about my day.

“Mama.” He studies my face, then my hands, checking for damage before I’ve taken off my coat. “You took forever.”

“I had difficult patients.”

“Did the hurt man die?”

Galina looks between us. “He has been asking about him all day.”

I pick Misha up.

She clucks her tongue. “I don’t understand why mothers tell little children about patients and wounded men. At his age, he should be thinking about porridge and cartoons.”

“I tell him about my work. He doesn’t mind.”

Misha doesn’t ask how badly the man was hurt or whether there was blood. He only watches me, waiting for the answer that matters.

“He’s alive,” I say.

Misha nods once, satisfied, wriggles out of my arms, and darts away with his arms spread, making a sound like an airplane.

I thank Galina, pay her, and endure a lecture about the nutritional failure of yogurt before guiding her out. Then I lock the deadbolt, slide the chain into place, and check both twice.

Misha lifts his sticky hands. I crouch and pull him against me harder than I mean to. His small body stiffens before relaxing, and he pats my shoulder twice because that’s how I comfort him.

“You smell like hospital soap,” he says against my neck.

“You smell like stolen jam.”

“It wasn’t stolen. Galina saw me.”

“That makes her an accomplice.”

He thinks about this, then presses his face into my shoulder. I think about Alexei’s chest open beneath my hands five nights ago, his heart motionless under my palm, and hold his son a little closer.

Misha squirms first. “Mama, is the hurt man tall?”

I ease him back so I can see his face. “Why are you asking that?”

He picks at one thumbnail and says nothing.

“Misha.”

He hates that tone, and his mouth pulls down. “I dreamed him.”

I wipe the jam from his fingers with the hem of my clean shirt. “Tell me about the dream.”

Misha clasps his hands behind his back and studies me. Alexei stood that way at the gala while I explained why rich donors were about as useful as broken ventilators. He watched me for a long second, then asked whether I insulted every man before sleeping with him.

I told him only the lucky ones.

Misha tilts his head.

I sit on the sofa before my knees give out.