Rachel looked at the card Anya held up. "Myach."

Anya, sitting beside Rachel on Rachel's bed, read her side of the card. "Ball."

Rachel smiled and corrected Anya's pronunciation -- she'd said it closer to "byell," her attempt at an American short "a", as if she thought "ball" would rhyme with "gal." Anya grinned and said, "Ball. Okeh."

Rachel knew Anya would most likely get the word right the next time she saw it.

Anya held up another card. Her turn to say it first. "Chair." She didn't need to squint to read it. Anya looked, Rachel thought, so adorable in her new glasses. She'd picked out the wire frames herself. Peter Barlow had outdone himself, somehow coming up with a Russian-speaking optometrist willing to test Anya at the hospital. Wearing the glasses, Anya looked, to Rachel, like the librarian Rachel had learned she actually was. A very cute librarian.

Rachel read her side of the card. "Stul."

Ingrid, the translator, had done a little extra work for Rachel and Anya, providing them with a growing pile of flashcards, each with a Russian word in Cyrillic letters on one side, and the English equivalent in Roman letters on the other. Rachel supposed the State Department was still paying Ingrid for her services. Rachel and Anya used the cards in various ways. Right now they were doing a reading exercise. They both were learning new alphabets, and for practice Rachel was reading the Cyrillic side of the card aloud, either recognizing the word from seeing it previously or else sounding it out phonetically if she hadn't. Anya was doing the same with the Roman side of each card. And if either was unfamiliar with the word, she learned its meaning by hearing the other say it in her own language.

They both were wearing out their iPads, using the language teaching apps -- learning grammatical rules, tenses, first, second, third person and so on, along with lists of nouns, verbs, and adjectives they used to practice forming sentences. All text appeared in Cyrillic on one side of the screen and was reproduced in Roman characters on the other side. They could highlight any word or words, touch the Speaker icon, and hear the highlighted text pronounced through the headphones. It was phenomenally useful. But both of them loved the low-tech flashcards too, since using the cards was something they could do together.

It had occurred to Rachel, when the iPads came, that they might also watch movies on them -- Russian language ones for herself, English ones for Anya. Greta, the woman teaching Rachel to use her iPad, had checked with Barlow and got his permission to get Rachel and Anya memberships in a streaming movie site, and Greta and Bettina, the Russian speaker showing Anya how to work her device, had taught them how to select among the movies available. Rachel and Anya both had a strong preference for comedies; they'd both had enough drama for their lifetimes. Rachel had taken lately to covering the English subtitles with a card, while she tried to follow the Russian dialogue without help, rewinding and checking the subtitles if she started to get lost. She found she was recognizing many of the words, sometimes entire sentences, usually enough to catch the drift of what was happening, at least briefly. From beyond her headphones, she often heard Anya giggling at the show she was watching.

Rachel's eyes caught the television screen momentarily, in the upper corner of the room. The Western news media, it seemed, remained fascinated by the Irkhetnia story. On the closed captioning, Rachel read, "Irkhetnian acting president Anatoly Perelenko has set Saturday, June 9 as the date for elections. Voters will be choosing delegates for the convention to draft a new national constitution, set to begin in August..."

Rachel had become accustomed to seeing her own name on the screen occasionally, usually in reports of her progress in the hospital. She tried not to dwell too much on how much time she and Anya might have to spend in front of cameras once they arrived back in the States. She was hoping it wouldn't be too long until the media would get tired of them and they could start having lives in privacy.

Rachel saw Patti, the nurse, at the door. She paused the movie on her iPad, and took off the headphones. Rachel's movements were still slow, her arms and fingers stiff, but it was getting better every day. She and Anya both spent two hours daily in physical therapy, loosening their joints and building up muscles that had weakened from disuse.

Patti gave Rachel a curious smile. "Rachel, you have a visitor."

Rachel frowned in puzzlement. She knew it wasn't her dad, who would simply have walked in, and who in any case had returned to the States last week, promising to get everything ready for a big homecoming. He had, at one point, talked about getting a room ready for Anya, converted from a den, until Rachel told him that she and Anya would be sharing her room. He had blinked and said, "Ummm, okay."

Rachel gave up trying to guess who might have come to see her. A news reporter would have been stopped and turned away at the front desk. "Who is it?"

Patti looked at a business card she was holding, reading and pronouncing it carefully. "Alina... Petrovna."

Rachel gasped. "Here?? Yes, sure, send her back!"

A minute later Alina looked in the door uncertainly, and smiled broadly when she saw Rachel. "Hello, Rachel."

Alina looked, if possible, more stunning than ever. Her hair styling alone had probably cost hundreds of euros, her makeup was perfect and gave her the face of a goddess, and her black dress fit her curves as if designed for her specifically, which it no doubt had been. She came over to the bed, leaned down and hugged Rachel tightly. "Dey tell me you are big part of why I am free. T'ank you so very much!"

Out of the corner of her eye, Rachel saw Anya glaring at Alina. She looked like she wanted to push Alina away, clearly not wanting any woman hugging Rachel, especially not a woman as gorgeous as this.

Rachel turned to Anya, took a moment to assemble the sentence in her head, and said, "Anya, Alina byla v tyur'me." (Anya, Alina was in the prison.) The words up until the last one were very basic, with "byla v" run together as if a single word. The very last word was one Rachel had made sure to learn.

Anya nodded cautiously, while Alina drew in a quick breath and exclaimed, "Rachel! Ty govorish po russki!" (Rachel! You speak Russian!)

Rachel waved her hands in negation. "Only a little bit. I'm just learning. Don't try testing me. I'm not up for that yet." To her relief, Alina had finished the hug, straightened up and stepped back just slightly. Rachel wasn't sure if she had caught vibes from Anya, but it did seem to lower the tension a little.

Rachel tried to work out the best way to include Anya in the conversation. She thought about telling Anya that it was Alina who had taught Rachel to say "I love you" in Russian, but dismissed the idea immediately. That's all I need, she thought. Anya is jealous enough as it is, and this would require a lot of explanation to put it in the right context. She looked back at Alina. "This is Anya. She was in the cell next to mine, and we became really close."

Alina said to Anya, "Zdravstvuyte, Anya." Rachel recognized it as a polite greeting, basically just "Hello." Anya responded with "Pryvet."

Alina went on with a friendly, "Ya rad, chto vy teper svobodny." Rachel believed it was something like "I'm glad that you are now free." She recognized "rad" as "glad" or "happy," while the word "svobodny," or free, as in having freedom, was dear to Rachel's heart these days.

Anya at last flashed her sunburst smile at Alina. "Spasibo." Thank you. That had been one of the first Russian words Rachel had learned in the cells, and she knew, now, that while it ended with the Cyrillic equivalent of the letter "o", it was pronounced as Anya had done it, "spasiba."

Rachel looked back at Alina. "So what are you doing in Germany? You didn't come all this way just to see me."

Alina laughed. "Don' say dat. I could maybe come all dis way to t'ank you, but really I have job as model. I get calls for jobs as soon as dey hear I am free. I t'ink dey miss me. So... We are doing shoots dis week in Heidelberg. It is... maybe one hundred kilometers from here. It is so beautiful, we use river, mountains, university, all dose places. And it is close, so I come here." She pointed to Rachel's iPad. "What is dat do?"

Rachel grinned. "This is what's teaching me Russian. And Anya is using hers for English." Rachel and Anya spent the next twenty minutes showing a fascinated Alina how they were using the language apps.

"Dey got one to learn German?" Alina wondered. "I learn English long time ago, because I hope to work in America. But den I get too busy in Europe. I like dis country. I want to come here a lot, so I want to know German better." She looked at her watch and frowned. "I got to go. Dey want me back for nighttime shoot. But here..." She took a card from her handbag and gave it to Rachel. "I live in Prague again now. You call me, come dere and visit. Is not really very far from here. I will show you Prague. Beautiful city. And I t'ink I could get you modeling job."

Rachel blinked. She can't really mean that, she thought. Certainly not at her level. But she really looks serious. "I... don't think I'd be ready for that. But I'd love to visit, if..."

She turned to Anya, grinning. She sought out the words in her head. "Ty hochesh..." More mental rummaging through vocabulary. "...my poyedem v..." She had to do a quick search on her iPad for the Russian version of Prague. While she was at it she looked up the word for someday. "...Pragu kogda-nibud?" (Do you want... we will go to... Prague someday?)

Anya beamed at her, looking excited. "Yehss, I... oo-ill go oo-it' you." Anya struggled with "w" sounds, not used in the Russian language. Rachel had helped her construct a workaround that would probably evolve into a more authentic w soon. "Th" sounds, also not used in Russian, were harder. For Anya they were a work in progress.

Rachel reached for Anya's hand, and met it halfway -- Anya had already begun reaching for hers.

Rachel wondered why she hadn't tried to go farther than handholding with Anya. They'd often done that much. They walked the hallways for exercise, and always held hands while doing it. No doubt the people smiling at them assumed they were mother and child, inevitable when Rachel had at least fourteen inches in height on Anya, and the slightly baggy pajamas made Anya's figure much less obvious. At any rate, holding hands just felt very natural, and without it there was always a sense of something missing. But Rachel hadn't tried for more intimate physical contact.

Rachel believed she had settled the lesbian question for herself long ago, while still at the prison. That was not, as far as she could tell, what was holding her back from deeper intimacy now.

Maybe, she thought, I'm worried that our experience as mannequins has ruined it. All those weeks of daily enforced eroticism, in bizarre, disgusting, painful positions neither of us could get out of... What if we were to try being physically intimate now, and discovered it only reminded us of all of that?

One more reason to hate the monster, Dimitri Gerov. This might be something he's done to us that has outlasted his possession of us.

At least holding Anya's hand wasn't a problem at all. Rachel loved doing that.

I wish, thought Anya, there could be a little more than holding hands.

Stop it, Anya! she ordered herself. You know Rachel isn't like that. She doesn't want a woman for that. And how could you want more than love? There is nothing better than that!

Alina looked back and forth between them. Rachel wasn't kidding, she thought, about them being close.

Alina gave Anya a hug, equivalent to the one she'd first given Rachel. She gestured towards Rachel, and said to Anya, "Pozabot'sya o ney." (Take care of her.)

Anya giggled. "Ya eto sdelayu." (I will do it.)

Alina withdrew to the door, and said to Rachel, "I mean it, you call, you come see me. Bot' of you."

Rachel grinned. "We will."

The phone rang on the stand between Rachel's and Anya's bed. Dad calling, Rachel told herself, picking it up. "Hello?"

"This is the operator, Miss Preston. May I transfer a call to your room?"

Rachel frowned in puzzlement. They knew to let Dad's calls ring through. "Who is it?"

"She says her name is Irina Novocheva."

Rachel's jaw dropped. The Amazon. Calling here! "Uhh, yes. Put her through, please." She looked at Anya. "Irina Novocheva!" Anya gave her an astonished look.

After a click, Rachel said "Hello" again. She could hear the person at the other end take a breath, followed by few of seconds of silence. It sounded as though papers were being shuffled. Then a voice spoke -- slowly, enunciating very carefully. "Dis.. Is.. Irina Novocheva." No hesitation in saying her own name, of course. "You.. vunce.. spoke.. to.. me.. in.. my.. lang-vadzhe.." (Awkward pronunciation of the last word, but Rachel understood it was "language." There is not a letter for the "j" sound in Russian, but it is possible to cobble together something that worked.) "...to.. apolo-dzhize.. because.. you.. are.. a.. good.. person.. so.. now.. I.. vill.. speak.. to.. you.. in.. yours." The rhythm was strange, and rising and falling of voice was mostly arbitrary. The next sentence sounded as though she was smiling. "I.. wrote.. dis.. and.. had.. a.. friend.. translate.. it.. into.. English." She paused for a moment.

Rachel found herself starting to leak tears. Irina obviously attached a lot of importance to this, and had done a lot of work to make this conversation happen. Irina went on now: "I.. know.. I.. am.. free.. of.. dat.. place.. because.. of.. you." Her next words sounded as if she had practiced them more than the others, to make sure they sounded just right. And heartfelt. "T'ank you. T'ank you. T'ank you. I.. owe.. you.. my.. freedom.. and.. my.. life."

Rachel not only wasn't sure what to say, she wasn't sure how to make her voice work. Tears were streaming down her cheeks now, her throat clenched so tight she almost couldn't breathe. Another voice came on the line, female, Russian-accented but speaking English clearly. "Rachel, my name is Mila Ostrovskaya. If you want to say anyt'ing to Irina, you can tell me and I can tell her." Obviously this was the friend who had produced the English version of Irina's speech.

Rachel finally managed to choke out, "Mila, tell Irina I will always remember this. And tell her I didn't do it all by myself. A lot of people had to help. But this means very much to me, and I'm glad she is doing well." She waited, listening to Mila speaking to Irina in Russian. She was able to catch enough of the words tell that Mila was passing on her message accurately.

Rachel almost asked to speak to Irina again so she could say something in Russian, but realized that her brain, right at this moment, wasn't up to the intellectual effort. Something else occurred to her instead. "Mila, ask Irina if she'd like to talk to Anya Simonina. Anya was the girl, that night, who told me how to say 'I'm sorry' to Irina."

After another pause to pass that along, Mila said, "Okay, she will talk to Anya."

Rachel looked at Anya, suddenly realizing she probably should have asked Anya beforehand. She put the sentence together and spoke it. "Anya, ty hochesh, chtoby pogovorit' s ney?" (Anya, do you want to talk to her?) Anya looked horrified. Shit, thought Rachel. All she could think to say in the way of encouragement was "Ona hochet pogovorit' s toboy." (She wants to talk to you.)

Reluctantly, Anya reached for the phone. Nervously at first, but with growing confidence, Anya made conversation with Irina, the woman who had once slammed her fist into Anya's face. (But I did that to her too, Rachel reminded herself.) Anya seemed almost animated by the end of the conversation. Rachel could follow Anya's end of the conversation well enough to tell that Anya was explaining that she was going to go to America with "Rehchel." Anya was getting better at pronouncing the name.

At last Anya hung up, and said excitedly, "She rembers me..."

Rachel grinned, and said slowly, "Remembers." At least, thought Rachel, she put the "s" at the end. English was a crazy language in some ways. It can't be easy, Rachel saw now, to think to put the "s" at the end of a verb, only for the third person singular present tense and no other time. Anya was getting it correct more often now.

Anya slapped her cheek with the heel of her hand. "Da, prasteetye." (Yes, sorry.) "She remembers me. She is in Moskvye... Moscow. Russia oo-ants her for..." She had to consult the iPad. "...ice hockey team." (In Anya's pronunciation, "eyss hokih tyimm.") "Oo-en she is..." She checked again. "...healt'y." Healthy. (Anya said it with a long e sound -- of course, thought Rachel, who would think not to?)

Rachel said, "Ochen horosho!" (Very good!) She imagined Irina must be going through a much more rigorous physical rehab than she and Anya were, considering the demands that would be made on her body as soon as she was up for it. Rachel didn't doubt Irina could handle it, though. At least Irina hadn't been a mannequin nearly as long as she and Anya had.

Anya went on, "She asks, do oo-e oo-ant to go to Moscow. She oo-ill show us all of Moscow."

Rachel laughed. The invitations were piling up. "Da. Kogda-nibud." (Yes. Someday.) That last word was coming in handy. Lots of things coming up.

It seemed to Rachel that Irina probably owed her freedom at least as much to Anya as to Rachel herself, along with all the other people who had helped -- Zlata, Raisa, Raisa's cousin Tatyana, Ambassador Kenner, General Perelenko. People, she thought, are giving me a lot more credit than I deserve.

Rachel shivered suddenly at the thought of what would be happening right now if those other people hadn't done what they did: Instead of herself and Anya planning their future, while Irina prepared to join a major national ice hockey team, Anya would be dead, and Rachel and Irina would be frozen together, naked, in an inescapable embrace and kiss, for the entertainment of The Monster, Gerov, while he thought up further miseries he could inflict on them.

Rachel pushed the image aside. I really do want us to go to Russia someday, she thought, and have Irina show us around. I should speak Russian a lot better then. I can tell Irina all about what it took to save us.

And Irkhetnia. I want us to go there too, if Anya is willing. I really want to thank the nurses there, as much as Irina thought she should thank me.

Rachel had found out, from Peter Barlow, that the three nurses had all wanted to go back to working in a military hospital -- as long as they could do it together. They were doing so now. As for the other girl, Larisa, whom Rachel now understood was an artist whom Gerov had assigned the job of creating the poses for Anya and herself, Rachel had no hard feelings for her, and she wanted Larisa to know that. We all did things we hate to imagine someone could make us do, Rachel reminded herself. She'd been told Larisa had had a breakdown at the end, but was being treated at a clinic in Warsaw and was making progress. Rachel was very glad to hear that. She intended to try to keep track of where Larisa ended up.

Anya felt almost giddy at the thought of visiting all those places with Rachel, places she'd heard of and wondered about. And the most important part of that was: with Rachel.

She wondered if Rachel would be willing to go to Irkhetnia on one of these trips. Anya wanted two things out of a trip to her home country. First of all, she wanted to thank Zlata. Anya was fairly sure Rachel didn't know the last thing Zlata had done for them, but Anya knew Zlata was the reason she and Rachel were together here now. She'd heard what Zlata had said to the ambassador about keeping them together, and didn't think Rachel, who spoke almost no Russian at the time, could have understood. As soon as I have enough of the words, Anya promised herself, I'll tell Rachel all about it, and when I see Zlata I'll give her the tightest hug she's ever had in her life.

The other thing Anya wanted from an Irkhetnia trip was to find Kalina. She needed to tell Kalina that she completely forgave her for the whipping. She forgave every girl at the prison for anything they'd ever done to her, because none of them were responsible for it. The people who were responsible were getting what they deserved.

Anya let herself daydream about walking around a big, faraway, exotic city, holding Rachel's hand, both of them pointing at wonders to share them with the other. She sighed.

Patti appeared at the door again. "Rachel, you're probably worn out from all the attention, but could you handle another visitor? I'd just turn him away, but he's come a long way."

"Who is it?"

Patti looked at a business card. "Name is James Walder." She snorted. "Says here to call him Jim. He's from Fox-Werther Publishing. You said no reporters, but he swears he's not here to interview you. He says he wants you to write a book."

Rachel stared at her. "Write a book?"

Patti gave her an I'm-just-telling-you-what-he-said look. "You want to see him? He came here from New York."

"He came just now from New York? Like he flew here for this?"

"That's what it sounded like."

Rachel had a feeling she was being manipulated into seeing the man -- by him, not by Patti. Big publishers often had offices in London, Paris, and, more relevant, places like Munich, from which someone could drive here, and back, in a day -- it was about three hundred miles. If the man had come here from Munich, Rachel would have had Patti tell him she was sorry he'd wasted the time. It was a lot harder when the guy had come halfway around the world, and she imagined he knew that.

She sighed. "Okay, send him back here."

A few minutes later, the man arrived at the door. He walked over to Rachel, smiled, and held out his hand to shake. "Hi, Rachel. I'm Jim Walder. I'm from Fox-Werther Publishing..."

"I don't shake hands. Sorry." Not with men, anyway. Rachel knew she was being a little rude. Meeting a strange man set her teeth on edge -- and apparently he was a man who wanted something from her. She'd experienced more than a lifetime worth of men who wanted something from her, and who took it without asking her. Didn't these people know enough to send a woman? she wondered. But I should give him a chance, she told herself. Half the world is men, Rachel. You'll have to deal with it. "My nurse said you were looking for me to write something?"

He looked at Anya, and back at Rachel. "Would we be able to go somewhere to talk privately?"

Rachel felt her irritation level rise a notch higher. "We are talking privately." She reached over and touched Anya's arm. "Whatever you want us to talk about, if it can't be in front of Anya, then it can't be talked."

Walder held up his hands. "I'm sorry. I know I just got off on the wrong foot." Rachel wondered briefly what Anya would make of that idiom. Maybe it was self-explanatory. "Of course, talking right here is fine." He pulled up a chair alongside the bed and sat. "I want to see what you would think about writing a book about your experiences in Trevachevski Women's Prison."

Rachel supposed the name of the place was fairly familiar to most Americans now, if they watched the news.

Her first reaction was to push the man out of the room. There were a lot of memories she worked hard to stay away from, and dragging them out in the open, examining them, mulling them over, was at the very bottom of her list of things she wanted to do.

But maybe, she suggested tentatively to herself, this could actually help. Hiding memories away is the best way to let them fester, rot, and spread into a cancer that takes over and drives everything else out. Maybe if I dig into them, I can find a perspective that shrinks them in size and strips off the pointy edges so they can't hurt me.

Rachel wondered how much of the conversation Anya had followed so far. She probably understood what was being discussed, Rachel decided. Certainly Anya had got the reference to the prison, and very likely knew what "write a book" meant.

Rachel started to speak to Anya, and realized there were a couple of words she didn't know. She held up a hand, and said to Walder, "Give me just a minute." She did some tapping at her iPad screen.

At last she turned to Anya and said, "Ty hochesh, chtoby pomoch mne napisat knigu o tyur'me?" (Do you want to help me write a book about the prison?)

Anya seemed to Rachel to be going through the same series of thoughts she herself had. At last, she gave a tiny nod, and looked at Walder, understanding that it was really his question. "I can write book." She pronounced the vowels in "book" about halfway between "shook" and "spook."

Walder gave Anya a patronizing look. "Of course you can."

Rachel tensed, furious now. She worked to remain polite, but she knew her voice was icy. "Listen. Anya isn't a child, so don't treat her like one. You want a book by a survivor of the prison? She's a survivor too. She was there with me. She saw things I didn't see, and knows things I don't know. If you want this book, she is my co-author."

Walder went pale. "I'm truly, truly sorry. Miss Preston... If I say the wrong thing sometimes, it's because you went through some things I can't imagine, and I can't get my mind there, so I'm going to be clumsy sometimes and screw up. I apologize in advance for any future times when that happens, and I apologize again for it happening now."

Rachel suddenly decided she liked the man. That was one of the more gracious apologies she'd ever heard, and... Well, the truth was, she felt as though she had some power over him. It had been way too long since she had felt she had power over any man. It felt nice. "I'm sorry too. I've got a lot shorter fuse than I used to have."

"Very understandable."

She actually found herself smiling at him. "So what would I need to do?" She wanted it to be clear, in her wording, that she hadn't decided to do it yet.

"Just remember. That's all. We can get you a ghostwriter, and you could tell everything you remember, everything that happened, to him..."

"Her."

"...to her, and she'd create the narrative around it."

Rachel thought about it. She didn't consider herself completely useless as a writer. "Can we try writing it ourselves? At least see if your editors, or whoever, think it's good enough?"

He spent a moment in thought. "We'd have some deadlines established, so we might not want you writing an entire book, and then us having to start over with a ghostwriter. But if you could put a couple of chapters together... We could consider those and see where to go from there." He clearly didn't want to commit to it, but it sounded to Rachel as if he thought it was possible.

Rachel was aware that writers of books solicited by publishers were usually paid an advance on their work. "Is there any sort of advance involved?"

He nodded. "I don't know whether you know how that works. If we decide not to publish the book, you'd keep the money. Not if you decide not to write it. Here." He pulled a notepad out of his pocket, wrote on the front page of it, tore the page out and handed it to her. "This is what we're thinking."

Rachel looked at the figure on the paper. Her breath froze. She tried not to react visibly.

Two hundred fifty thousand dollars.

That would come in SO handy, she told herself. But I can't let dollar signs make me throw away what's important. This guy's company is just the first one to get to me. There are others.

When she decided she could speak again, she said, "You'd make it clear in writing exactly what we're expected to do?"

"Oh, of course. I can go back to my hotel, contact headquarters, and get them to send me a contract electronically so I can print it out. The contract would be very specific about what we expect."

"That needs to work both ways. We'd have some things we expect from you. Like, no editor gets to punch up any of the stories we write down to make them more thrilling, or water them down so they're more palatable."

He hesitated. "Any editor is going to want to make... adjustments. Say, for example, he... she thinks the picture is not quite being painted clearly, that the idea isn't coming across. She'd want to fix that."

"Fine, as long as there's a back-and-forth about it. I'm sure we can learn some things from the editor. But absolutely no departure from the truth, no exaggerations, no telling things in a way that they didn't really happen because it would make a better read, and no skirting the issue so readers don't get queasy, so that it misses what really happened."

He smiled. "You sound just like..." He laughed. "We've got an editor I think you'd want to work with."

Rachel smiled. "I don't expect her to fly all the way here, but we'd want to meet her at least on the phone. But still, put it in writing, what I just said. We're not just going to take verbal promises."

Walder nodded. "I'll see what we can do. Talk to you again tomorrow?"

"Okay. Oh, and the contract needs to be for Rachel Preston and Anya Simonina. Everything split equally." She spelled it for him. "And we won't sign anything right away. I need time to talk it over with Anya and decide." Probably, thought Rachel, we can get Ingrid to come in and interpret, so we both really understand each other. Anya needs to know what the contract says, and I need to find out if it's really okay with her, and if she wants any changes. Without Anya agreeing, this whole thing isn't happening. Though it already sounds like she wants to do it.

Walder made a note of the name.

Sandy, the night nurse, said good night to both Rachel and Anya -- Rachel had told her how to say it in Russian -- and dimmed the lights in the room. Neither Rachel nor Anya liked the lights completely off. Without visual cues telling them where they were, their minds took them back to the prison again.

Tucked into her warm bed, Rachel sighed happily. That advance money... Enough to put a down payment on a house they could share, with royalties coming in later to make mortgage payments. Tuition would be covered.

They had already, before today, with Ingrid's help, done some talking about the future. Anya had been almost beside herself with excitement about the idea of going to a university. It was possible, Rachel thought, that her schooling in Irkhetnia might be sufficient to qualify her for admission, though her language skills, right now, weren't up to the level where they needed to be. Anya knew that. She was making fast progress, though. The terms of her student visa could be met by taking night classes at the local high school. Rachel was sure they had English As A Foreign Language classes, something Anya was happy to hear existed. Anya would go into such a class with a head start, but there was no doubt the class would help -- they'd give her writing assignments, let her get used to the ways other people besides Rachel spoke English, and so on. Anya's knowledge of science and math, Rachel had determined, probably already exceeded that of a lot of entering freshmen -- they just taught those things better in countries outside the U.S., especially the former Soviet ones. But she probably needed classes in American history and civics, of which she knew, of course, very little at present. That would be crucial for citizenship as well. The advance money, now, would help pay for all of Anya's preparations.

Rachel had already decided not to go back to the university herself until Anya could join her there. She and Anya would have time to outline the book, with Rachel putting it in readable prose and typing it, and they should be able to make considerable progress while Anya was taking the night school classes.

Rachel had an additional use for her share of the advance money, as well as any royalties when and if the book began selling: she had decided she was going to use a chunk of it as seed money to start up what she wanted to call the Bryan and Amanda Forrest Foundation, for fighting drug trafficking and abuse. Mandy would be so thrilled to see something like that.

With visions of the future dancing in her head, Rachel drifted to sleep.

A familiar sound woke Rachel up. One she hadn't heard in a long time.

A rubbing, light slapping sound. It was rhythmic. It was wet. It was accompanied by heavy breathing. And it was coming from Anya's bed.

As Rachel listened, she heard Anya say softly, between gasps, "Rehchel. Ahh. Rehchel." Anya was, as Rachel had called it at the prison, sleepsturbating.

Rachel's heart started pounding. She suddenly found she was getting very wet.

I can't let you do this, Anya, thought Rachel. This is like watching you nibble on a carrot from your pocket when we could both be sampling the banquet spread out in front of us.

Very softly, just above a whisper, Rachel said. "Anya." There was no response. She said it two more times, a little louder.

Anya's breath caught suddenly. Awake now, she turned her head towards Rachel.

Anya suddenly seemed to realize fully what she'd been doing in her sleep. And that Rachel had seen.

Rachel saw Anya's face darken suddenly. In full light, Rachel was sure it would be flaming red, and it seemed to have highlights of reflected light, as a sudden sweat broke out. In a panicked voice, Anya said, "Rehchel! Im soarry, Im soarry..." She hid her face in her hands, starting to cry.

Rachel's jaw dropped. What is wrong with her? she wondered. She knows I want...

No she doesn't! a voice within suddenly told Rachel. After all this time, Rachel told herself, all the physical intimacies I've wanted with Anya and wished I could have with her, I've never told her! And the only time we made love, she thinks it's because Gerov ordered us to do it! She knows I love her, but she doesn't think I would want her that way! And now she thinks I'm horribly shocked!

She said aloud, "Shhh, shhh! Anya! Shhhh. Posmotrish' na menya! Posmotrish' na menya!" (Look at me!) Rachel had heard that said often enough in the dialogue of Russian movies.

Anya stopped crying, and tentatively spread apart the fingers across her eyes enough to see.

I don't know enough words, thought Rachel, and can't find them quickly enough, to tell her everything I feel. I just have to show her.

Rachel pushed the bedsheets and blanket away, down to the end of the bed.

Her fingers were still stiff enough to make it hard to unbutton her pajama blouse. It didn't help at all that they were shaking. She got it off, finally, and threw it to the floor, and immediately pushed the pants, with their elastic waistband, down her legs.

Anya still had her hands on her face, but only, Rachel thought, because she had forgotten they were there. Between the spread fingers her eyes were wide.

Rachel, now naked, held her arms out to Anya, spread apart wide. She said one of the earliest Russian sentences she had learned with the iPad. "Ya zdes." (I am here.)

Anya continued staring. Rachel wasn't sure Anya was breathing. Rachel beckoned with her hand.

Slowly, as if fearing a trick, Anya slid out from under the covers and let her feet down to the floor.

When Anya started to climb into Rachel's bed, Rachel realized she had somehow not had occasion to learn to say "Take your clothes off" in Russian. She smiled, reached out and tugged downward on Anya's pajama blouse, and tapped at the buttons in front.

Anya giggled. Rachel suddenly felt the full force of how much in love with that giggle she was.

Anya slowly unbuttoned the blouse, looking as if she still somehow expected Rachel to stop her. She shrugged out of it, let it fall atop Rachel's on the floor, and with shaking fingers, and looking as if she were about to faint, she pushed the pants down.

Naked now, Anya climbed up onto Rachel's bed again. She moved to lie atop Rachel, and Rachel knew, she already knew, that there would be no interference from any memory of anything she and Anya had been made to do in Gerov's office. None of that was real. It belonged to another lifetime. Her present lifetime started now, this minute.

Rachel was trembling, not from any fear, but from a bursting energy that made her want to do everything two lovers can possibly do, all at the same time. To have a hundred arms that could hold Anya in every possible way. To have a thousand pairs of lips that could kiss every part of her all at once.

Rachel didn't even notice when the kiss actually started. Somehow it was already happening. She didn't regret missing the moment of making the kiss begin. She had experienced the first kiss, and the anticipation of it, long before, with Gerov watching in the general's office. Finding herself kissing Anya now, without remembering the first touch of lips, seemed just right. It signified that she had always been kissing Anya and always would, even at times when there was no physical contact.

Anya, while kissing, was making small whimpering sounds in the back of her throat. Rachel realized Anya was crying, and suddenly became aware that she herself was too. So much intensity of feeling. So much need being met.

Rachel raised her legs and wrapped them around Anya, her knees pulled far back, her heels resting on Anya's butt -- another way, along with tightening her arms, to draw Anya more tightly against her. She and Anya both started twitching hips, gasping with effort, using tongues more now in the kiss.

Rachel could not imagine why she had been worried. Making love with Anya, she told herself with complete understanding and a touch of awe, is never going to remind me of anything we did in the People's House. There is no resemblance whatsoever in any of its qualities. It was as if Rachel had been worried she could never look on the color gold because she had once seen gray. The truth was that this golden time made all the gray that had passed before unimportant, beneath notice.

She let the gold consume her -- sparkling, beautiful, and precious beyond price.

Rachel awoke gradually, and saw it was still nighttime. Her arms were full of sleeping Anya, holding her close, hearing her light breathing. Rachel didn't want to wake her. She liked watching Anya sleep, her untroubled face seen up close, just inches away.

She hoped she could always wake up with Anya in her arms.

Rachel's breath caught suddenly, as a memory came back to her. Of her mother, picking up around the kitchen while Rachel ate lunch. Rachel believed she must have been about five years old at the time.

How do you know for sure, Mom? Rachel had asked. Rachel heard her mother's answer in her memory now: You know for sure when you don't need to ask yourself if you're sure.

It hadn't altogether made sense to five-year-old Rachel. But it did now.

Rachel felt Anya begin to stir. A smile spread across Anya's face. She opened her eyes, leaned forward a few inches and kissed Rachel.

No time better than the present, Rachel decided.

She reached out to retrieve her iPad from the nightstand. It was always in reach. It took her only a minute to find how to say it. She spoke it silently to herself, several times. She closed her eyes and said it twice more, then checked to see if she was remembering it correctly.

Her heart thumping in her chest, she put the iPad down, looked at the patiently waiting Anya, and took both of Anya's hands in hers.

"Anya... Ty zhenishsya na mne?"

Anya took one of her hands back and put it over her mouth. It looked to Rachel as if Anya was trying very hard not to laugh at her. Rachel had actually expected something like that. Anya finally said, still stifling a giggle, "Rehchel, you... use wrong oo-ords!" (Words.)

Rachel just smiled and shook her head.

"Mom, how do you decide who to get married to?"

"Well, honey, sometime you'll meet someone and know you want to spend the rest of your life with them."

"But... How do you know for sure, Mom?"

Mom smiled. "You know for sure when you don't need to ask yourself if you're sure."

Trying to convince Rachel without offending her, Anya said, "Rehchel, you say to me, you want that we are married!"

It surprised Rachel a little that Anya knew the word "married" without looking it up. She must, Rachel decided, be watching more romantic comedies than I am. "Anya, v Amerike, my mozhem eto sdelat." (Anya, in America, we can do it.) Not, Rachel reflected, in every state. But we can in my state.

Anya stared at her for a long time now. Rachel had known this would be a completely new concept to her. Finally Anya said in a tiny voice, "Rehchel, it's true?"

Rachel nodded her head solemnly. She didn't want there to be any hint she might be joking. She only repeated her question. "Ty zhenishsya na mne?" (Will you marry me?)

Anya was still looking wide-eyed, still struggling to comprehend an idea she had never imagined.

Rachel suddenly thought of something that might make it more real to Anya. Something that excited Rachel the instant it came to her.

She put her hand to her chest, and said, "Rachel Preston-Simonina." Then she touched Anya lightly on the nose with her finger. "Anya Preston-Simonina."

The glow that spread over Anya's face, of which the sunburst smile was only a part, seemed to illuminate the whole room to noontime brightness. She said excitedly, "Da! Da, da, da! Yehss! Yehss!" She threw her arms around Rachel, more tightly than ever before, and kissed her. She and Rachel both let the kiss last a long time.