“You knew this would happen, marrying a soldier,” Mama said as we stood on the steps outside Kazan Cathedral, “my father and his father... I had the sense to find a greengrocer.” She busied herself picking tiny lint balls off my black coat while thoughts jumped fences in my mind. There was no body. There were no pictures. Just an empty casket and Nikita’s personal effects from the barracks. I didn’t believe them. It wasn’t him. Mama ceased her plucking and lifted her hands, s