“Have you not heard?” Her voice wavered, as if something inside was breaking.
“What do you mean?” I asked, gripping the front door handle with one hand. The bag of medicines nearly slipped from my grasp.
Lidiya Pavlovna, 84, a widow whose eyes held a lifetime of untold sorrows, stood in the hallway. Her gaze was fixed beyond me—into nothingness, as if someone was standing just out of sight.
“He laughed again…” she murmured.
“Who?” I asked, though a chill was already crawling down my spine.
“My Vitya,” her voice became barely audible. “He had that kind of laugh. Mischievous. As if he wanted to scare me. He used to do that as a child. Even before he died…”
