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In the store, they have only enoughtheir h the crowded streets, they make it to the apartment at just past six

Vera can hear her children crying and it breaks her heart She opens the door and scoops the, “I missed you, Mama ”

Vera thinks then that she will never again follow her : she will never leave her children alone

“Where is your papa?” she asks Anya, who shrugs her small shoulders

He should have been home by now

“I’et through the streets ”

Worry gnaws at Vera, though, sharpening its bite with every passing ht o’clock, he comes into the apartment The side of his face is dirty and his hair is damp with sweat

“Verushka,” he says, pulling her into his arhtly she cannot breathe “The trolleys were full I ran all the way here Are you okay?”

“Noe are,” she says

And she believes it

That night, while her grandmother snores in the hot darkness, Vera sits up in her bed The big crisscross of tape and newsprint on the s lets only the ely, eerily silent It is as if Leningrad itself has drawn in a sharp breath and is afraid to exhale

In this shadowy darkness, their apartment seems even s area and the children’s cots in the kitchen, there is barely room to walk in here anyether There isn’t enough rooo around it

Not far away, Ma up in their bed Beside Vera, Sasha is as silent as she’s ever seen him

“I don’t knoe’re supposed to do,” Olga says At nineteen, she should be thinking of love and romance and her future, not war “Maybe the Germans will save us Comrade Stalin—”

“Shhh,” Ma a should know this by now