“He was good at making friends,” Kostia concluded quietly. “I never was. But that didn’t matter, because I had him.” We’d been passing Kostia’s flask of vodka back and forth as he talked. I took another swallow, gazing at the row of graves. Lyonya’s was still heaped up, the earth black and tumbled, but it would soon be just another mound of drying earth topped by a forlorn fading star. I didn’t have any flowers, so I took a heel of bread from my canvas gas-mask bag and crumbled it over the earth so the Sevastopol sparrows would circle and sing here. For my golden front-line husband. Kostia
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