An hour later, Clara has surfed a grand total of one wave, though that’s stretching the word “surf” to its absolute limit. Still, she’s beaming ear to ear, even as her eyes flutter closed with exhaustion when we lay back on the sand as the tide laps at our toes.
“Where did you learn to surf?” Clara murmurs.
“Tolya taught me,” I admit. “Whenever we went on vacation, he’d take me out.”
“Did you go on vacations a lot as a family?”
I take a deep breath and remind myself that she’s asking totally normal questions that any random person would ask. She doesn’t know how loaded they are.
“Did we go on vacations? Yes. As a family? Not so much.”
“Oh.” I expect her to ask me to explain that, but she doesn’t.
“Our father loved to travel. I’ll give him that much. He’d take us around the world, to
