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Viktor sits across from us, answering messages on his phone while Anya shows me the mathematics book she brought from home.

“Do you know what a Fibonacci sequence is?” she asks.

I look at her. “Are you trying to impress me?”

“Maybe.”

“It's working.”

She grins and opens the book to a page of spirals and numbers.

I explain how the sequence works, starting with zero and one, and how each new number is the sum of the two before it.

Anya follows along with her finger. “So zero plus one is one, and then one plus one is two, and then one plus two is three?”

“Exactly,” I say. “And then three plus two gives you five, and if you keep going, you get eight, thirteen, twenty-one, and so on.”

She looks delighted. “That's easy.”

“Most things are easy once somebody explains them properly. Unfortunately, some mathematics teachers consider confusion a character-building exercise.”

Viktor looks up from his phone. “Are you telling my niece that her teachers are incompetent?”

“Not all of them. I'm sure some are merely underfunded.”

He laughs.

Anya turns another page. “Can you teach me more?”

“If you promise not to make me do long division before breakfast.”

“What's wrong with long division?”

“Nothing. We have a complicated history.”

She giggles and continues asking questions, and I find myself enjoying the conversation more than I expected.

I like teaching.

Not the endless scheduling or chasing parents for payment, but the moment when a child understands something and their whole face changes.

Anya has that expression now. She doesn't just want the answer. She wants to know why it works.

Viktor watches us for a while before putting his phone away. “You'll be a good teacher for her,” he says.

I glance at him. “She's easy to teach. She actually wants to learn.”

“That's not always enough.”

“It's a pretty good start.”

He looks toward Anya. “Nikolai has been trying to find someone who can keep her interested without making her feel as though she's being supervised every minute of the day.”

Anya makes a face. “Papa doesn't like me going to school.”

I look at her. “Why not?”

“He says it's dangerous.”