Papa stood up. “You did very well, Tania. I’m proud of you.” He motioned to Alexander and Dimitri. “Come. Have some vodka.”

Alexander politely shook his head. “No, thank you. I have duty later.”

“Shake your head for yourself,” said Dimitri, stepping forward.

Papa poured, frowning at Alexander. What kind of man refused a drink of vodka? Alexander may have had his reasons for refusing her father’s hospitality, but Tatiana knew that because of that, her father was going to like Dimitri better. Such a small act, yet the feelings that would follow would be so permanent. And yet because he refused, Tatiana liked Alexander better.

“Tania, I don’t suppose you bought any milk?” Mama asked her.

“Papa told me dry goods only.”

“Where are you from?” Tatiana’s father asked Alexander.

“Krasnodar region,” he said.

Papa shook his head. “I lived in Krasnodar in my youth. You don’t sound like you’re from there.”

“Well, I am,” said Alexander mildly.

To change the subject, Tatiana asked, “Alexander, would you prefer some tea instead? I can make you some tea.”

He moved closer to her, and she had to summon her breath. “No, thank you,” he said warmly. “I can’t stay long, Tania. I’ve got to get back.”

Tatiana took off her sandals. “Excuse me,” she said. “My feet are . . .” She smiled. She had tried hard to pretend they did not bother her, but the blisters on her big toe and little toe were bleeding.

Alexander glanced at her feet, shaking his head. Then he looked into her face. That expression seeped into his almond eyes again. “Barefoot is better,” he said very quietly.

Dasha came into the room. She stopped and stared at the two soldiers.

She looked healthy, radiant with the day, and Tatiana suddenly thought her sister looked too healthy and too radiant, but before she could utter a sound, Dasha exclaimed, her voice thick with pleasure, “Alexander! What are you doing here?” Dasha didn’t even glance at Tatiana, who, perplexed, looked at Alexander and said, “You know Dasha . . . ?” but then broke off in the middle of the question, seeing realization and conscience and unhappiness strike his mute, comprehending face.

Tatiana looked at Dasha, then back to Alexander. She felt herself paling from the inside out. Oh, no, she wanted to say. Oh, no, how can this be?

Alexander’s face became impassive. He smiled easily at Dasha and said, not looking at Tatiana, “Yes. Dasha and I have met.”

“You can say that again!” Dasha said with a laugh and a pinch of his arm. “Alexander, what are you doing here?”

Tatiana glanced around the room to see if anyone else had noticed what she had noticed. Dimitri was eating a pickle. Deda was reading the newspaper, his glasses on. Papa was having another drink. Mama was opening up some cookies, and Babushka had her eyes closed. No one else saw.

Mama said, “The soldiers just came back with Tatiana. Brought food.”

“Really?” Dasha said, her face turning up to Alexander, full of mild curiosity. “How do you know my sister?”

“I don’t,” said Alexander. “I ran into her on the bus.”

“You ran into my little sister?” said Dasha. “Incredible! It’s like destiny!” She tweaked him lightly on the arm again.

“Let’s go sit down,” said Alexander. “I think I will have that drink after all.” He moved to the table in the middle of the room by the wall, while Dasha and Tatiana remained by the door. Dasha leaned over and whispered, “He is the one I told you about!” Dasha must have thought she was whispering.

“One what?”

“This morning,” hissed Dasha.

“This morning?”

“Why are you being so dumb? He’s the one!”

Tatiana got it. She hadn’t been dumb. There was no morning. There was only waiting for the bus and meeting Alexander. “Oh,” she said, refusing to allow herself to feel anything. She was too stunned.

Dasha went to sit in the chair next to him. Glancing sadly at Alexander’s uniformed back, Tatiana went to put the food away.

“Tanechka,” Mama called after her, “put it away in the right place, not like usual.”

Tatiana heard Alexander say, “Don’t bother with shots. Pour mine straight into a glass.”

“Good man,” said Papa, pouring him a glass. “A toast. To new friends.”

“To new friends,” everyone chimed in.

Dimitri said, “Tania, come and have a toast with us,” and Tatiana came in, but Papa said, no, Tania was too young to drink, and Dimitri apologized, and Dasha said she would drink for herself and her sister, and Papa said like she didn’t already, and everyone laughed except Babushka, who was trying to nap, and Tatiana, who wanted the day to be instantly over.

From the hallway, as she picked up the crates and carried them one after the other into the kitchen, she heard tidbits of conversation.

“Work on the fortifications must be speeded up.”

“Troops must be moved to the frontiers.”

“Airports must be put in working order. Guns must be installed in forward positions. All of this must go ahead at fever pace.”

A little later she heard Papa say, “Oh, our Tania works at Kirov. She’s just graduated from school — a year early! She plans to go to Leningrad University next year when she turns eighteen. You’d never know it by looking at her — but she graduated a year early. Did I already say that?”

Tatiana smiled at her father.

“I don’t know why she wanted to work at Kirov,” said Mama. “It’s so far, it’s practically outside Leningrad. She can’t take care of herself,” she added.

“Why should she, when you’ve been doing everything for her all her life,” Papa snapped.

“Tania!” yelled Mama. “Wash our dishes from dinner while you’re out there, won’t you?”

In the kitchen Tatiana put away all she had bought. As she carried the crates, she would glance into the room to see Alexander’s back. Karelia and the Finns and their borders, and the tanks, and weapons superiority and the treacherous marshy woods where it was so hard to gain ground and the war with Finland of 1940 and . . .

She was in the kitchen when Alexander and Dasha and Dimitri came out. Alexander did not look at her. It was as if he were a pipeline full of water, and Dasha had turned the faucet off.

“Tania, say good-bye,” Dasha said. “They’re going.”

Tatiana wished she were invisible. “Good-bye,” she said from a distance, wiping her floured hands on her white dress. “Thanks again for your help.”

Dasha said, holding on to Alexander’s arm, “I’ll walk you out.”

Dimitri came up to Tatiana and asked if he could call on her again. She may have said yes, she may have nodded. She barely heard him.

Leveling his eyes on her, Alexander said, “It was nice to meet you, Tatiana.”

Tatiana may have said, “You, too.” She didn’t think so.

The three of them went, and Tatiana was left standing in the kitchen. Mama came out and said, “The officer forgot his cap.”

Tatiana took it from Mama’s hands, but before she could take one step to the corridor, Alexander had returned — by himself. “Forgot my cap,” he said.

Tatiana gave it to him without speaking and without looking at him.

As he took the cap from her, his fingers rested against hers for a moment. That made her look up. Tatiana stared at him with sadness. What did grown-ups do? She wanted to cry. She could do nothing but gulp down the aching in her throat and act grown-up.

“I’m sorry,” Alexander said so quietly that Tatiana thought she might have misheard him. He turned and walked out.

Tatiana found her mother frowning at her. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Be grateful we got some food, Mama,” said Tatiana, and started to make herself something to eat. She buttered a piece of bread, ate part of it with absentminded abandon, then jumped up and threw the rest out.

There was nowhere for her to go. Not in the kitchen, not in the hallway, not in the bedroom. What she wanted was a little room of her own where she could go and jot down small things in her diary.

Tatiana had no little room of her own. As a result she had no diary. Diaries, as she understood them from books, were supposed to be full of personal writings and filled with private words. Well, in Tatiana’s world there were no private words. All private thoughts you kept in your head as you lay down next to another person, even if that other person happened to be your sister. Leo Tolstoy, one of her favorite writers, wrote a diary of his life as a young boy, an adolescent, a young man. That diary was meant to be read by thousands of people. That wasn’t the kind of diary Tatiana wanted to keep. She wanted to keep one in which she could write down Alexander’s name and no one would read it. She wanted to have a room where she could say his name out loud and no one would hear it.

Alexander.

Instead, she went back into the bedroom, sat next to her mother, and had a sweet biscuit.

Her parents talked about the money Dasha was not able to get out of the bank, which had closed early, and a little about evacuation, but said nothing about Pasha — for how could they? — and Tatiana said nothing about Alexander — for how could she? Her father talked about Dimitri and what a fine young man he seemed to be. Tatiana sat quietly at the table, summoning her teenage strength. When Dasha returned, she motioned for Tatiana to come into their bedroom. Tatiana dutifully went. Whirling around, Dasha said, “So what did you think?”

“Of what?” said Tatiana in a tired voice.

“Tania, of him! What did you think of him?”

“He’s nice.”

“Nice? Oh, come on! What did I tell you? You’ve never met anyone so handsome.”

Tatiana managed a small smile.

“Wasn’t I right? Wasn’t I?” Dasha laughed.