If the coattails and the hem lines had been longer it could have been a scene from Gone With the Wind. There were even a few horse-drawn buggies mingling with the farm pickups and rusty Cadillacs. Joe pulled the car up outside the realtor’s house, climbed out, and walked up to the door. An elderly black woman ushered him inside. Amy examined her face in the rearview mirror; she looked as tired as she felt. This time the drive had seemed longer and felt different; this time she was leaving Washington, her family, the few friends she had forever. Soon she would be leaving America, her adopted home for more than twenty years. She would miss her uncle. James too, if he survived.She wondered if Kuznetsky – she must remember to call him Smith – if he had such feelings. She couldn’t make him out. He seemed a reflection of the world rather than one of its inhabitants, like a force of nature – no, like a force of the opposite, of human order …She had once read a novel, an awful novel called Orphans of the Storm, and, being a fourteen-year-old orphan at the time, had romantically identified herself with its title.
