She didn't turn around. She'd learned not to. If she turned, he'd see the redness in her eyes, the tremor in her hands. And he'd ask, and she'd lie, and he'd know.

The silence stretched between them like barbed wire. Outside, the Neva River was frozen solid—white, still, dead. Not unlike the space between this man and the woman who shared his name but not his heart.

He turned, his coat already on, his boots already laced. He was always leaving. She was always being left.

The door slammed. The teacup trembled in her grip. A crack ran through the porcelain—thin, spidering, inevitable.