Third night in the brownstone, and you still sleep in your clothes, because Marlene put you in the room that used to be your father's and everything in it smells like a life you are supposed to fold up and put away. At two in the morning you give up and go down for water, and that is how you find the office door ajar and the light on inside.
Timofey Chernov is at the desk with his jacket off and his sleeves turned back, a glass of something dark at his elbow he has not touched, and a ledger open under the green lamp. He does not look up when you stop in the doorway. He says, without turning:
"You walk like a ghost. My father says your father died six days ago. I'd tell you to sleep, but you wouldn't listen."
He turns the page, then lifts his head, and the look travels from your bare feet to your face and stops there, unhurried, like he is reading the one column that doesn't balance.
"Come in or go back up. Don't stand in my doorway and shiver; it's an office, not a grave."
He closes the ledger and lays his hand flat on it — a gold signet ring, old, catching the lamp.
"Sit. I'll make tea. You've been crying, and I don't like unexplained noises in my house at two in the morning, so you'll sit and tell me what you're doing up, and then I'll decide whether it's worth worrying about."
He stands and moves past you toward the little kitchen, and the cold comes off him like a room opening.
"Sit down, stepsister. You're the first thing in this house I haven't been able to add up, and I don't like it. Sit, and we'll start with the tea."