was, but I had a feeling she was the woman across the aisle pretending they didn’t exist. Miami’s nightlights disappeared from view, the orange glow fading into dark and turbulent water. I mindlessly watched a couple of PG movies considering my audience, though things blew up like explosives were going out of style on their screens. Twelve hours later, we landed in Moscow. Stepping off the plane and into the frigid jet bridge, I shivered. Inhaled. Exhaled. I could see my breath. I’d never experienced such cold in my life. It grabbed ahold of my lungs, stealing the heat from my body with icy fingers. Pd wanted to experience my birthplace, but I should have just climbed into our freezer. As I stopped to slip on my coat, someone ran into my back. I turned with an apology on my tongue, but the little old lady who held a Chihuahua in a mesh carry-on bag beat me to it. “Excuse me, dear,” she said in a British accent. “I didn’t see you there.” “No, I’m sorry. It was my fault.” She closed her sable fur coat and tilted her head. “You look very familiar. Have we met before?” “Um, I don’t think so.” “No ... Pm sure I’ve seen you before.” She touched her gaudy gold necklace in thought. Then something dawned on her. Something that made her put a hand on her chest and eye me up and down as if I was a hooker. This was growing weirder by the second, but before I could say anything, someone rolled by in a wheelchair, and the tiny dog in her bag started to bark. While she tried to soothe little Rupert, I offered another awkward apology and made a quick exit. On the curb of the airport, I unfolded a piece of notebook paper I’d found stashed in one of my papa’s desk drawers. Feeling like Nancy Drew, with the help of Google Translate, I’d learned the Russian scrawl was an address to a home, complete with a record of bills he’d been paying there for years. I hoped this wasn’t a dead end because I had nowhere to go from here, and I wasn’t ready to crawl back to Ivan so soon. I handed the taxi driver the paper, not having the faintest idea how to read the foreign alphabet. The cabbie’s dark gaze met mine in the rearview mirror, holding eye contact just long enough to send a whisper of unease down my back.