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“You think she’s involved.”

“I think we don’t know enough to say she isn’t,” she says.

For a moment, I say nothing. “She was injured,” I say. Why am I defending her? Even I don’t know anything about this woman except that my daughter wanted to have her, and I got her for Anya. Except now I want her too, in a different and dangerous way. Of course, Sergei has no idea I was buried in her cunt half an hour ago.

“Yes,” he says.

“Twice,” I say, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes.”

“And you still doubt her?”

“I doubt timing,” Sergei says. “I doubt coincidences. I doubt a woman with no connection to us appearing exactly when Anya needed someone to save her.”

My jaw tightens. “She did save her.”

“I know.”

“Then say what you mean.”

He holds my gaze. “Maybe the point is not that she is guilty. Maybe the point is that you believe she isn’t.”

The room goes quiet. I look away first, not because I am unsettled, but because I am angry that I have to consider it at all.

Elara sitting across from Anya, teaching her fractions with toast. Elara on my desk, trembling under my hands. I don’t like her in this conversation. I like less that she belongs in it.

“What have you found?” I ask.

“Nothing concrete.”

“Then why are we discussing her?” I demand.

Sergei hesitates, looking caught aback by my reply. “She was delivering pastries,” he mutters. It sounds weak even for him.

“Yes.”

“To a school my daughter attends.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s suspicious now?”

“No,” Sergei says. “The delivery itself is not suspicious. The timing is. am not saying she planned anything. I am saying someone may have planned around her.”

I say nothing.

“There is a difference,” he adds.

“I understand the difference.”

“Good. Then understand the rest. She had no clear connection to Anya before that morning, but now Anya trusts her more than people who have worked here for years. You brought her into the house within a day. She is in the middle of this family now.”

“She saved my daughter.”

“Yes,” Sergei says. “And that’s exactly why nobody questions her.”

The room goes quiet.