Olha reaches the building on Lermontova at five forty in the morning, when the sky over Sumy is the color of milk and the firemen are already setting up the barriers. She is seventy-one. She survived because she lives two streets away, in a basement the drone did not see.

The drone came in through the kitchen side, third floor. She heard it too, she still hears it in her ears. A sound that is first a droning over the river Psel, then a whistle, then nothing.

The firemen know her. One of them, Andriy, is the son of a colleague of hers from school canteen number four, where Olha worked for forty-two years, until two thousand and twenty-two. He greets her with his cap in his hand. He tells her they are closing the perimeter in half an hour. He tells her she cannot go up.

Olha nods. She does not answer him.

On the street, below the building, the heaps. She recognizes a white enamel plate with a blue rim — the one her daughter Yulia served borscht on, Sundays. She recognizes a pillowcase in yellow and white checks: her grandson's pillowcase. She recognizes half the handle of a wooden ladle, and understands that it is her own ladle, the one she had given Yulia at Christmas because she said she did not know how to make borscht.

Andriy has turned away. He is talking to another fireman. Olha goes in through the side door. She knows she has thirty seconds before they see her.

The stairs stink of gas and wet mold. The first floor is intact. On the second-floor landing the bicycle of the boy from number eight is still there. The doors are shut: the neighbors have already been taken away.

On the third floor the door of Yulia's apartment has been blown off by the blast. Olha does not go in through the door. She goes in through a gash in the wall that opens straight onto the corridor. She walks on the boards that still hold. The kitchen ceiling is gone. She sees the morning sky.

Mykyta's wardrobe is at the end of the corridor, on the left. It is almost intact: the doors are open. Everything inside can be seen: the black sweatshirt with NIRVANA written on it that Yulia had bought him, the white communion shirt (he had never made his communion, but he had wanted to wear it for the photograph), three pairs of trousers badly folded, the light blue Dynamo Kyiv scarf.

Underneath, at the bottom, the shoes.

She bought them two weeks ago at the shopping center where the crater is now. White Nike Air Force One, size forty-two. Mykyta had wanted them because a schoolmate called Bohdan had them. Yulia said no for ten days. Then she bought them.

Olha bends down. The shoes are clean. The sole is worn just a little at the right heel. She lifts them. They weigh almost nothing.

She hears Andriy's steps on the stairs. He is looking for her. She hears him calling her name.

Olha stays where she is. She holds the shoes against her chest.

She looks around. The shirt, the NIRVANA sweatshirt, the light blue scarf. The math exercise book open on the desk, at the page of the prime numbers up to a hundred. She realizes she could take other things. She could take the exercise book. She could take the scarf.

She does not take them.

She comes out into the corridor with the shoes and nothing else. Andriy is in the doorway. He does not make a scene. He walks her down holding her under the elbow, the way it is done with old women.

In the street, Yulia is arriving by car with Vova, the brother of her dead partner. Yulia has a bandage on her left hand. She was discharged from the Sumy hospital two hours ago. She walks with Vova, slowly, as if every step cost her a thought.

Yulia sees Olha. She sees the shoes.

She stops.

Olha holds the shoes out to her. Yulia does not take them. She stays three steps away. They look at each other.

Andriy moves off a meter, for discretion.

Yulia says only: “Mama.”

Olha goes on holding the shoes up. She is holding them for Yulia. She understands, at this moment, while Yulia looks at her and does not come forward, that she did not take the shoes for Mykyta. Mykyta will not put them on again. She took them for Yulia's left hand, the wounded, bandaged one. She took them so that Yulia would have something white and new with a weight to it to hold between her hands in the months to come.

Yulia takes two steps forward. She takes the shoes with her right hand. Olha supports her with her left arm. Andriy watches them from a distance.

They walk together toward Vova's car. Yulia does not cry. She holds the shoes against her hip, the way you hold a shopping bag when you do not know where to take it.

Olha gets into the car with her. Vova drives slowly. The shoes lie between the two women, on the middle seat.

Olha looks out of the window at the street in Sumy waking up. She sees a bakery raising its shutter. She sees a bicycle. She sees a girl of maybe eleven going to school with a pink backpack.

She says nothing. She goes on supporting Yulia's arm.