Marina said. “This…” “I don’t know yet,” Gregory said. “Not for sure. We’d need a DNA test.
Linda found a lab. If you want, we can check.” Marina stood over the broken mug in socks and the soft blue house slippers Gregory had brought her two months earlier, the ones with little cats stitched on them.
Annie stirred in the next room. “I want to,” Marina said. Gregory nodded.
“So do I.” He stood, picked up the broken pieces of the mug, dropped them in the trash, then sat back down and said:
“Marina, if this is true—if you are Tanya—I want you to know I looked for you every day for twenty-four years. Every day.” She didn’t answer, because there was nothing to say. Because sometimes a whole life—from a prison cell to candy on a grave—turns out to have been a road, and suddenly you understand every step led here: to this small kitchen, this table, this photograph, this man.
In the next room Annie murmured “ba-ba-ba” in her sleep and went quiet again. Outside, the first snow of the year was falling. The trees in the courtyard stood white and still.
