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The man holding the rail nods too quickly and nearly clips the wall with it. Elara makes a small sound, half warning, half prayer, and Anya leans sideways in her chair to watch the procession continue.

“Why are you replacing Elle’s bed?” she asks.

“Because it broke,” I say.

“How?”

Elara shuts her eyes.

I look at my daughter. “Bad craftsmanship.”

Anya considers this with the grave attention she gives to anything that might become useful later. “Should we complain?”

“No,” Elara says at once.

Anya looks at her.

Elara clears her throat. “I mean, your father has already handled it.”

That’s the exact moment the front door opens.

Irina steps inside with her handbag on her arm and the kind of expression that suggests she has arrived prepared to disapprove of something but has not yet chosen what. The worker with the side rail is halfway across the hall. He stops because she is in his path. Irina stops because there is a broken piece of bed in hers.

For a few seconds, nobody speaks.

Then Irina looks at the rail, at the worker’s red face, at the mattress already waiting near the open side corridor, and finally at Elara standing beside Anya with a workbook in one hand and guilt written across her entire body.

“Am I interrupting renovations?” she asks.

“No,” I say.

Anya says, “Elle’s bed broke.”

Irina’s gaze moves to me.

I keep my face still.

“I see,” she says.

“You don’t,” Elara says, much too quickly.

Irina looks back at her. “Don’t I?”

The worker shifts the rail against his shoulder. A splintered end catches the light. Elara notices. Irina notices Elara noticing. Anya, mercifully, has gone back to examining her pencil, though I suspect she is listening to every word.

“It was a faulty frame,” Elara says.

“Was it?” Irina asks.

“Yes.”

Irina removes one glove finger by finger. “How unfortunate.”

I hear Galina make a noise somewhere behind me. When I turn, she is looking at the flowers on the hall table with unnecessary concentration.

The worker says, “Sir?”

“Go,” I tell him.