"Remember your uncle," Misha whispered. "When you are rich in America. Remember how I watched over you."

"I don't want to go to America," saidYakov. "It's for the best. For all of you."

"I want to stay with you, Uncle! I want to stay here."

"You have to go."

"Why?"

"Because I have decided." Uncle Misha grasped his shoulders and gave him a hard shake. "I have decided."

Yakov looked at the other boys, who were grinning at each other. And he thought: They are happy about this. Why am I the only one with doubts?

The woman tookYakov by the hand. "I'll bring them to the car. Gregor can finish up here with the papers."

"Uncle?" called Yakov.

But Misha had already turned away and was staring out the window.

Nadiya shepherded the four boys into the hallway and down the stairs. It was three flights to the street. All those clomping shoes, all that noisy boy energy, seemed to ricochet loudly through the empty stairwell.

They were already on the ground floor when Aleksei suddenly halted. "Wait! I forgot Shu-Shu!" he cried and went tearing back up the stairs.

"Come back here!" called Nadiya. "You can't go up there!"

"I can't leave him!" yelled Aleksei. "Come back here now!"

Aleksei just kept thudding away up the steps. The woman was about to chase after him when Pyotr said, "He won't leave without Shu-Shu."

"Who the devil is Shu-Shu?" she snapped.

"His stuffed dog. He's had it forever."

She glanced up the stairwell toward the fourth floor, and in that instant Yakov saw, in her eyes, something he did not understand. Apprehension.

She stood as though poised between pursuit and abandonment of Aleksei. When the boy came running back down the stairs with the tattered Shu-Shu clutched in his arms, the woman seemed to melt in relief against the banister.