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“I’m not sure what your boyfriend has told you,” Alexei says, looking at my sister now with a gentle kindness I didn’t expect. “I know he can heal injuries that are recent, but I can heal most anything. Even old injuries.”

Mirdza freezes.

“Would you like me to try healing your leg?”

“Is it painful?” she asks, as if that would deter her. My sister’s the toughest person I know.

“It can be,” Alexei says. “But it’s short-lived.”

A whole range of emotions pass over Mirdza’s sweet face. Fear. Hope. Excitement. Nervousness. And fear again. I hate that our lives have taught her never to believe in something good. Never to chase rainbows. Never to expect that things might go right.

“When?” she asks.

“Right now, if you want.” Alexei steps away from my car. He looks at the big house. “We’d need to go somewhere quiet and calm.”

Mirdza blinks. Then she nods. “Yes.”

Hope surges in my chest. For ten years, I’ve lived with the misery of knowing I could’ve saved my sister. My cowardice wrecked her life. My fear cost her everything. But now. . .can he really help her?

I know exactly how she’s feeling right now.

I’m not sure I’ve ever hoped for something this much in my entire life, and he just mentioned it casually, like it was nothing. While we were all figuring out how best to carpool over to a burger place.

Grigoriy takes Mirdza’s hand, which is trembling, and they start walking toward the big house.

“What are we—” Kris stops. “Did Alexei offer. . .”

“You knew he could do it?” I ask.

She shrugs. “The guys thought he might be able to, but they weren’t sure, and they didn’t want to press when he’d only been back for a few days.”

I jog to catch up to where Alexei’s casually sauntering toward the house. “Are you sure?”

He stops moving and turns to face me. “Sure?”

“That you can do it.”

“Of course not,” he says. “I’m never sure about healing something. But of the dozens of times I’ve tried, it’s always worked.”

“Have you ever healed someone whose leg has been broken, twisted, glued and screwed together, and then broken again, and then surgically repaired with more bolts and screws and a bone graft?”

He frowns.

I bet they didn’t have procedures like that in his time. “It has metal and wire in there, holding the pieces of the bone together.”

His brow furrows. “I’ll do the very best I can.”

It’s not enough, though. He has to fix it. “Please do.”

He steps toward me, his hand raised a little, and his fingers brush against the edge of my jaw. “If there is any way I can repair your sister’s leg, I’ll do it, Adriana. No matter what it takes. I promise.”

I can’t seem to say a word, but I nod.

Like sinners on our way to church, we all walk inside quietly, slowly, seriously. Heads bowed.

“Is everything alright?” Kristiana’s dad hops up off the sofa and follows us to the base of the stairs.

“Just doing some wedding stuff, Dad,” Kris says. “It’s fine.”