He ran into the room, his heart pounding, and his clothes soaking wet.

"What's wrong?!" she asked him.

He ducked into a side room away from the windows in the door. "The police are looking for me. They think I killed someone," he said.

"Oh my god! Why do they think that?"

"I don't know, but I didn't do anything."

"What happened?"

"I was our for a walk when the storm started, and I knocked on the door of the nearest house where I saw lights on. There was no answer, so I opened the door to see if anyone...

Travel light, but take everything with you. They were father's last words to me before he took my mother and sister down the wooded trail opposite mine and my brother's.
The cossacks had burned our village to the ground an hour ago, and he told us we had to flee into the woods, where they would have more trouble finding us.

When I was young, we used to play in the forest, so I knew it well. I would take my young brother Sasha to a lake a few hours' hike from here, that the cossacks don't know about.

I...

Wine.
"Wine is the one thing we have left in common," he thought, looking out over the set table before him. She had opted for the house red, as he did. She hadn't drunk much of her glass; no time for it between the business at hand. He had gorged himself of his own glass.

She drew some papers from her bag. Starched, sparkling papers with her lawyer's mark on them.
"Her lawyer's mark on her," he thought.

He motioned the waiter to quickly refill his cup. He emptied it with equal alacrity.

Not words, but papers passed between them....