“—you’re thinking we won’t be able to hide things out in real life. Hide this.” A little swirling gesture encompassing the two of them, their private world under the Rusalka’s wing. “But we can, believe me. It’s not like when men go together, people being suspicious. There will be so many widows living together after the war, pooling supplies and pensions—as long as we’re raising children for the Motherland and we each have a story about a fiancé who died in the war, no one will look at us twice for sharing an apartment. We could be civil pilots, or teach aviation.”

Her voice was eager, her cheeks pink. She’d been thinking about this a long time, Nina realized with a sinking stomach.

“It won’t be like how we grew up, Ninochka—shortages, queuing for fuel, never being able to get shoes. The world’s going to be different after the war, Moscow’s going to be different—”

Worse, Nina thought. After years of starvation and war, it’s going to be worse.

“—and we’re not just air club fliers anymore. We’re decorated officers of Marina Raskova’s eaglets. You’ve met Comrade Stalin.” That damned awe in Yelena’s voice again. “We’ll have no shortage of recommendations when we apply to join the Party, you’ll see. Then we can pull strings for an apartment we don’t have to share with three other families, get plush jobs at the Zhukovsky Academy or anywhere we like.”

She was gabbling now, all hope. Such good, normal, usual things to want. Probably most of the women in the regiment cherished similar dreams for after this war was done.

“It’s not too much to want, Ninochka. You, me, a home, a baby or two, a job flying civil routes instead of bombing runs.” Yelena leaned forward, brushed her lips over Nina’s. “All we have to do is survive the war, and we can have it.”

“Maybe it isn’t too much to want,” Nina said. “But what if I want something else?”

“What?” Yelena smoothed her cheek. “Do you not want to live in Moscow? We don’t have to, I know you don’t like it—”

I don’t like Moscow, or Irkutsk, or the Old Man, Nina thought. I’ve come thousands of kilometers across Russia, and I haven’t seen any part of it I liked except the skies. She was happy flying over it, because then she didn’t have to look at it: a land of implacable crowds and draped bunting, bread queues and the eternal droning of loudspeakers, ruled over by a wolf.

When the war is over, what do you want? Yelena was still waiting for her answer. Such a simple question, surely the simplest question of all for soldiers at war. Everyone dreamed of what came after the bloodshed was done. Everyone, apparently, but Nina, who could honestly say she’d never given it a single thought. Who had never thought at all beyond the present, beyond a night spent flying and a morning spent kissing Yelena. Who would take this strange, perilous, nighttime life in the regiment over any other in the world, even with all its griefs and its terrors.

What do I want, Yelenushka? Nina thought, looking at her lover’s eager smile. I want to fly missions, hunt Germans, and love you. And the only thing on both your list and mine is you.

Chapter 31

Jordan

June 1950

Boston

You have no desire at all to marry Garrett Byrne. Anneliese’s wry comment still reverberated even as Jordan tried to busy herself behind the shop counter.

Of course I want to marry Garrett, she told herself. I’ve got a half-carat’s worth of sparkle on my left hand proving how much I want to marry him.

Ruth’s voice drifted up from the nearest display case. “May I hold the violin?”

“It’s not a toy, cricket,” Jordan said absently. “It’s a late-nineteenth-century copy of a Mayr.”

“But it’s small,” Ruth begged. “It’s my size.”

“That’s a half-size violin, Mr. Kolb says.”

“Very pleased to meet you at last, Mrs. McBride.” Tony Rodomovsky’s voice issued from the front of the shop, where he stood with Anneliese in her black suit. “My condolences for your recent loss . . .”

Anneliese murmured some reply as Jordan bent back over her own work: trimming down one of the prints of her dad she’d made late last night. It was a good portrait, very good—she could judge her own work well enough to know that.

You could do something with that shot, the thought whispered. Something professional.

Like what? she answered herself. You aren’t a professional. She was a girl with a nice job behind this counter, and an entertaining hobby in the basement. In spring she was going to be a wife with a nice husband going off to work every morning, and an entertaining hobby kept in the spare room.

“I’ve prepared the weekly report if you would like to see it, Mrs. McBride.” Tony came back to the register behind Anneliese in her full black skirts, black jacket, and little black hat with the spotted net chicly angled over her eyes. “Just a moment.”

“What do you think?” Jordan asked her stepmother as Tony vanished into the back room, remembering Anneliese had dropped by to give the new clerk a final look.

“He seems quite charming. If you’re satisfied with his references, I see no reason not to keep him on; you’re a good judge of character.” Anneliese gave Ruth a quick hug and looked at the shop clock. “I’m meeting with your father’s lawyer about the will; can you keep Ruth until closing? Oh, my—” Seeing the photograph of Dan McBride.

“Isn’t it him to the life?”

Anneliese nodded, tears in her eyes. Jordan gave her black-gloved hand a squeeze across the counter. Tony came back with the report, and Anneliese took it distractedly. “We’re glad you’ve joined us, Mr. Rodomovsky—” and she was gone in a waft of lilac scent.

“Phew,” Tony said. “I was shaking.”

“You were not. You think there isn’t a lady on earth you can’t charm, Mr. Rodomovsky.”

“Tony,” he said, as he usually did. “Every time you say Mr. Rodomovsky, I look around for my father and start counting up my most recent sins.”

He was leaning on the counter giving Jordan the same smile he gave all the ladies who set foot in this shop—though it came, she had noticed, with variations. The boyish grin went to ladies over sixty, who pinched his cheek (then bought something). The roguish grin went to ladies over forty, who lidded their eyes speculatively (then bought something). The full grin included both the crinkled eyes and creases in the cheeks, and it went to ladies over twenty who blushed (then bought something). Even Anneliese had gotten the modified grin with the sympathetic edge, given her widow’s weeds, and had responded to it. Tony Rodomovsky probably flirts with a hat rack if there isn’t anything else around, Jordan thought with considerable amusement. She was glad Anneliese had approved him, because he was certainly good for business.

“Princess Ruth,” Tony exclaimed as he saw the small nose press against the violin’s glass case. “Are you to favor us with a recital?”

Ruth was usually shy with strange men, but Tony upon meeting her had gone down on one knee and intoned that it was well known that Princess Ruth of Bostonia spake not to her knights errant until they had earned her favor with supreme deeds of gallantry, and that he would fain ride to the ends of the earth to win her regard—whereupon Ruth had come out of her hair with a cautious smile. She let him kiss her hand now, then poised an imaginary violin and began to play. Jordan wondered where she had ever seen a violin played; she certainly had the stance right.

Her mother, Jordan answered her own question. Her real mother. Ruth must have seen her mother play—they’d never know how or where, young as Ruth had been. She’d seemed to forget about it for years, but here it was coming up again, making her gaze at the child-size violin as if mesmerized. Was Ruth remembering it now because the only man she’d ever known as a father was suddenly gone, the way her musical, mysterious mother had disappeared?

Jordan’s gaze fell back to her dad’s eyes in the picture. He was solid, Anneliese had said of him last night, over her cocoa. Nothing could follow me out of a dream with him there. Maybe that was why Ruth had bad dreams. The solid, four-square father who had anchored her world for the past few years was now gone.

“You’re in a daze this afternoon, Miss McBride.” Tony’s gaze had turned serious. Jordan braced herself for the usual solicitous Are you all right? that she heard from neighbors and acquaintances and friends every day since her father died, and she mustered the usual bright I’m just fine!

“Would you like me to go away?” Tony asked instead. “I have a handkerchief or a listening ear if you want, but I can also leave you alone for some peace, quiet, and a good cry, in whatever order you need them. Alone being the important part.”

Jordan couldn’t help but laugh, startled. “I have . . . wanted that quite a lot, the last few weeks.” That was why she kept drifting down into the darkroom. People didn’t usually follow her down there.

“Right, then.” Tony straightened. “Shall I bugger off?”

“‘Bugger off’? Did you suddenly turn English?”

“I spent too many years working with a Limey.” A quirk of a smile. “Here’s an idea—why don’t you bugger off, Miss McBride? Take Princess Ruth home early, have some time to yourself.”

Jordan opened her mouth to refuse, but the bell jingled and Garrett’s voice sounded. “Jor, there you are.” He dropped his arm around her shoulders, giving a searching look as if to make sure she hadn’t been crying. “Are you—”