Page 54 of Dark Embers

My breath catches and he hands it back to me. Inside are neatly folded papers and an old, faded photo.

I pick it up. A woman stares back at me from another time. Graceful and petite. She has high cheekbones with soft blonde curls tucked behind her ears. There’s something familiar in her eyes—something that makes my skin prickle.

“Turn it over,” Oleksi says. “There’s writing on the back.”

I do. There’s a date written in neat, looping Cyrillic. Most of it is faded. “It says nineteen-sixty… something.” I look at him. “It’s a date. Probably the day the photo was taken.”

He leans forward again, brow furrowing. “Let me see it.”

I pass it to him. His eyes scan the photo, then widen slightly.

“Do you recognize her?” I ask.

“I do.” Oleksi nods.

“Do you know her?”

“Not personally. But that’s Anya Novikov.”

My eyes widen. “The cryptographer? The one who helped design Cold War military codes?”

He nods slowly. “My aunt has her picture in her study in Moscow. She’s a legend.” He hands it back to me.

My pulse quickens as I look at the woman. “Why would my sister have a photo of her?” My thumb idly rubs the back of the photo as I wonder out loud, and that’s when I feel it—indentations. I flip it over and run my finger across it. “There’s writing on the back.” My eyes meet Oleksi’s excitedly. “Do you have a UV light?”

“I do,” Oleksi murmurs, standing. He moves to the desk and pulls out a small flashlight. “Here try this UV light on the back of the photo.”

I flip the image over and flick on the light. A line of faint writing glows under the beam. My chest tightens.

It’s in Russian. Oleksi, who is looking over my shoulder, reads it aloud, slowly translating.

“My darling. This is not much, but may it help you remember who you are and where you come from. That I love you more than life itself. Stay safe. I hope we will meet again in a world filled with love.”

Oleksi and I look at each other in amazement before we glance at the rest of the contents in the box that I’m a little scared to look at. I force myself to reach into the box and pull out a folded letter. The paper is thick, worn at the edges.

“It’s addressed to a hospital in Moscow,” I murmur, scanning it. “Gavriil wrote this. A year and a half ago. He’s requesting birth records for someone named Lidiya Zorin.”

Oleksi takes it from me, his expression shifting. “I know this hospital. My family’s been on the board since before I was born. I guess Gavriil is writing to them because he would’ve had direct access to the hospital because of our connection to it.”

“Why was he requesting birth records?” I ask. “And why does Tara have this letter hidden in the box?” I look at him. “Do you think this is the photo and documents that Russian woman was talking about last night?”

“Why else would Tara hide them in a puzzle box?” He shrugs.

“None of this makes sense.” I shake my head and a tight knot forms in my gut.

I pull out the final item in the box—a yellowed certificate. A birth certificate.

I scan the name, reading: “Lidiya Zorin. Born to Yelena and Leonid Zorin. Twenty-seven years ago.”

My stomach flips. My mouth goes dry.

“Oh my God…” I whisper. “Tara’s twenty-seven.”

Oleksi goes still.

“Tara told me about two years ago that she was going to start looking into her real birth mother.” My voice drops as Oleksi takes the birth certificate from me and I lift the photo again. “What if this isn’t just some woman Tara was researching… what if it’s her? What if Tara is Lidiya Zorin and Anya is her birth mother?”

“I agree that Tara could be Lidiya Zorin,” Oleksi says cautiously. “But Anya Novikov would be… in her late seventies early eighties—too old to be Tara’s mother.”

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