Chapter 7: The Photograph

Aleksandr sent for her a week after the ledger conversation. Evelyn expected more questions about the shipping gap. She expected numbers, dates, another folder of financial records spread across his desk. She did not expect what he actually placed in front of her.

A single photograph, old and slightly bent at one corner.

“Sit,” Aleksandr said.

Evelyn sat. She looked at the photograph before she looked at him. Her breath caught somewhere in her chest and refused to move.

It was her father.

He stood outside a building she didn’t recognize, wearing a coat she didn’t remember, his hair grayer than she remembered it being. He wasn’t looking at the camera. He was mid step, caught walking, as though whoever took the photograph hadn’t wanted him to know.

“Where did you get this?” Evelyn asked.

“It doesn’t matter where,” Aleksandr said. “It matters when.”

He reached across the desk and turned the photograph over. On the back, in small, careful handwriting, someone had written a date.

Evelyn stared at it. Then she read it again, certain she had misread it the first time.

“This can’t be right,” she said.

“Why not?” Aleksandr asked.

“Because my father died before this date,” Evelyn said. “Months before.”

“Are you certain?” Aleksandr asked.

“I was at the funeral,” Evelyn said. Her voice had gone sharp, defensive. “I stood there. I watched them lower the casket. I know when my father died.”

“I’m not disputing that you attended a funeral,” Aleksandr said. “I’m asking whether you’re certain about the date on this photograph.”

Evelyn looked at it again. The handwriting was small but clear. There was no smudge, no correction, nothing to suggest it had been altered.

“The date is wrong,” she said. “Someone wrote it wrong.”

“Perhaps,” Aleksandr said.

“It has to be wrong,” Evelyn said. “There’s no other explanation.”

Aleksandr said nothing. He simply watched her, arms folded, letting the silence stretch until it became uncomfortable.

Evelyn had learned enough about him by now to know what his silence meant. It meant he disagreed with her. It meant he was waiting for her to reach the conclusion he had already reached, on her own, without him having to say it.

“Say what you’re thinking,” Evelyn said.

“I think you already know what I’m thinking,” Aleksandr said.

“Tell me anyway,” Evelyn said.

“I think the date is correct,” Aleksandr said. “I think this photograph was taken months after you buried your father. And I think you know that’s possible, or you wouldn’t be arguing with me this hard.”

Evelyn stood up so fast the chair scraped against the floor. “That’s not possible,” she said. “I was there. I saw the casket.”

“Did you see him inside it?” Aleksandr asked.

The question landed like a slap. Evelyn opened her mouth to answer and found she had nothing to say. She hadn’t seen him. The casket had been closed, and Viktor had told her it was closed because of the nature of his death, because it wouldn’t be right for her to remember him that way. She had believed him, she had been eighteen, grieving, and she had believed every word Viktor told her.

“The casket was closed,” Evelyn said quietly.

“Why?” Aleksandr asked.

“Viktor said it was better that way,” Evelyn said. “He said I shouldn’t see him like that.”

“Like what?” Aleksandr asked.

“I don’t know,” Evelyn said. “I never asked for details. I was grieving. I trusted him.”

“You trusted him about a great many things,” Aleksandr said. It wasn’t cruel, the way he said it. It was simply true, and that made it worse.

Evelyn sat back down slowly. She picked up the photograph again and studied her father’s face, the coat she didn’t recognize, and the building behind him that meant nothing to her. She tried to find some flaw in it, some sign that it had been staged or altered. She found none.

“Why would the Volkovs lie about something like this?” she asked. Her voice had lost its sharpness. Now it just sounded tired.

“That’s the question, isn’t it,” Aleksandr said.

“I’m asking you,” Evelyn said. “You clearly have a theory. You wouldn’t have shown me this otherwise.”

Aleksandr walked to the window before he answered. Snow was falling again, the way it seemed to fall every day in this part of the country.

“Men don’t fake a death without a reason,” he said. “Sometimes it’s to hide someone, sometimes it’s to hide what happened to them, Sometimes it’s to make sure no one goes looking.”

“Looking for what?” Evelyn asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Aleksandr said. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

Evelyn looked down at the photograph again. “If my father was alive months after I buried him,” she said, “then someone in my own family lied to me for years. Someone let me grieve for a man who might not have even been in that casket.”

“Yes,” Aleksandr said.

“Why would Viktor do that?” Evelyn asked. “He loved my father. Or he said he did.”

“People say a great many things,” Aleksandr said.

Evelyn set the photograph down and pressed her palms against her eyes. For a moment she said nothing at all. Aleksandr let her have the silence. He didn’t press her, didn’t offer comfort, didn’t try to fill the space with more questions. He simply waited, the way he seemed to wait for everything.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” Evelyn finally said.

“Then don’t believe anything yet,” Aleksandr said. “Just keep asking questions.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Evelyn said. “This isn’t your family.”

“No,” Aleksandr said. “It’s my enemy’s family. Which means I have less reason to want the answer to be simple.”

Evelyn looked up at him. “Do you think he’s still alive?” she asked. “My father?”

“I don’t know,” Aleksandr said. “I only know what the date says. I don’t know what it means yet.”

“Can I keep this?” Evelyn asked, nodding toward the photograph.

Aleksandr considered it for a moment, then nodded once. “Keep it,” he said. “But don’t let it consume you before we have more than a date on the back of a photograph.”

Evelyn picked it up and held it carefully, the way she might have held something breakable. “How did you find this?” she asked again.

“That’s a question for another day,” Aleksandr said.

She wanted to push, but she recognized the tone. It was the same tone he used when a conversation had reached its end, whether she liked it or not.

She stood, tucked the photograph into the pocket of her coat, and left without another word. Aleksandr didn’t stop her.

That night, sleep wouldn’t come. Evelyn lay in her narrow bed, staring at the same ceiling she had stared at for weeks, but her mind wouldn’t settle into the stillness it needed.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the closed casket. She saw Viktor’s face at the funeral, calm and composed, telling her it was better this way. She saw her father’s face in the photograph, mid step, unaware he was being watched.

She got up and lit the candle by her bed. She took the photograph out of her coat pocket and looked at it again, searching his face for some kind of answer. He looked older than she remembered. Tired, maybe. Or careful, the way a man looks when he knows someone might be watching him.

She thought about her father’s voice, the lessons he used to give her before any of this began.

Questions are never dangerous, Evelyn. Only the people afraid of answering them.

She wondered, for the first time in her life, if her father had been one of those people all along or someone with an answer he was too afraid, or too careful, to give her. She wondered if Viktor was afraid of the same thing.

She didn’t sleep that night. She sat with the candle burning low, the photograph in her hands, and let the question take root the way Aleksandr had clearly intended it to.