The Undelivered Letter

She has always followed the worldly wisdom: “The best is the enemy of the good.” But you can’t live a life without changing anything—especially in the Age of Change. If Nina could have imagined the consequences of a vacation spent in Crimea, she would hardly have dared to go to Alushta with a letter from the past, trying to find the intended recipient.

In any case, the drawing that suddenly appeared from the depths of an old secretary drawer in a time-yellowed envelope would have led to a change of fate for everyone in the Kostromin family.

“Any price…” Nina repeated to herself.

She remembered a room with an earthen floor and a soldier’s cot, a decrepit woman sitting motionlessly on a chair in the corner—an old woman who never managed to forgive herself an old sin. A life lived under the weight of guilt that, as it turned out, had long been forgiven...

Again and again, the thought cut her: what if she, Zinaida, had received Tonino’s letter forty years earlier? Just a letter, with the news that her sister is alive, healthy, and happy. But, as everyone knows, the past does not tolerate the conditional mood—everything happened as it happened.

Was that miserable drawing the cause? Did Margo hide the envelope in the hiding place of the old secretary not only out of jealousy—but because she knew the value of what it contained?!

No, Nina still refused to believe it.

And besides, the letter, according to Ivan, hadn’t been opened...