“It’s temporary,” I said. “He’s struggling. You can see that.”

“I see that our house has turned into a hospital ward,” Viktor replied. “I’m tired, Lena. I want to live normally.”

He spoke loudly. Loud enough for his father to hear every word, which was either careless or deliberate, and with Viktor it was always difficult to tell the difference because he’d perfected the art of cruelty that looked like honesty.

Three weeks earlier, he had stood in the kitchen with his hand on his father’s shoulder and promised—promised, with the gravity of a man who understood what the word meant—that he would stay by his side through the treatment. That Grigori would not face this alone. That family meant something.

“He’s your father,” I said quietly.Viktor looked at me the way he looked at things that were in his way.“He’s lived his life. Now it’s my turn.”

That sentence hung in the air like smoke. Grigori turned toward the wall. Not dramatically—he didn’t have the energy for drama. He simply rotated his head a few degrees, the way you turn away from a sound you’ve heard before and no longer need to identify. I watched his profile against the window light: the hollowed cheeks, the skin that had gone translucent over his temples, the hands that used to rebuild clock mechanisms with tweezers now resting motionless on a blanket they couldn’t grip.