We walk alone through this world, but if we’re lucky, we have a moment of belonging to something, to someone, that sustains us through a lifetime of loneliness.
It was a perfect day. For five minutes there was no war, and it was just a glorious Sunday in a Leningrad June.
When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street. Tatiana normally would have glanced past him down the street and moved on, except that this soldier was standing across the street and staring at her with an expression Tatiana had never seen before.