“Of course I’m coming home. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just that I was granted a special extension for doctors.”
“It’s the cook, isn’t it?” Why had I let that go on for so long?
Zuzanna gave me her serious doctor look. “He has a name, Kasia.”
“Papa will have a stroke. I’m not telling him.”
“The photos of the children are from Caroline. They need homes. One named Julien just lost both parents to an automobile accident in Ingonish, on the coast of Cape Breton Island in Canada.”
“That’s what orphanages are for.”
“He’s a toddler, Kasia. Caroline says that if Serge and I make things, well, more permanent—”
“Marry him? I hope you’re joking.”
“Then she could help us adopt. Once I’m completely better. We want to open a restaurant together. Mostly crepes and quiche at first—”
“So I am to go home alone while you stay here and marry a Russian cook and open a French restaurant and raise someone else’s child?”
“I am forty-four years old with no prospects, Kasia. You already have your family. This is my only chance.”
“At home, you can—”
“Do what? Work myself to death at the hospital? Delivering other people’s babies? Do you know what that’s like? I’m going to do what I can to make my life a good one in the time I have left. I suggest you do the same. Matka would want that.”
“What do you know about Matka? You think she’d want you sleeping with a Russian cook, turning your back on Lublin?”
Zuzanna snatched the folder and slid it back into her bag.
“I’m going to forget you said that, dear sister.”
She walked out the door without a look back, leaving me with her tray, the mashed potatoes hardly touched.
—
CAROLINE BROUGHT US UP to The Hay for the final few days of the trip. My last morning in Connecticut, I woke with a start from a dream of flying over wheat fields, hand in hand with my mother. It was one of those happy, so-real-you’d-swear-it-was-true dreams, until I realized it was not Matka’s but Herta Oberheuser’s cold hand I was holding.
I sat up, heart hammering. Where was I? Safe in Caroline’s guest bedroom. I felt the bed beside me. Cold. Zuzanna was up already? Visiting her Russian friend no doubt. Maybe it was good she was staying. She’d be safe and well cared for. But how could I go back to Lublin without her?
I padded down the hall in bare feet and through Caroline’s high-ceilinged bedroom, past her perfectly made canopy bed, to the tall windows overlooking the garden below. A winged stone cherub stood in the center of the clipped circles of boxwood hedges, guarding the tulips and bluebells. Caroline knelt at a rose bed, steam rising from the white mug next to her on the grass as a sea of lilac bushes swayed behind her in the breeze.
I breathed in the safety of it all and exhaled, my breath on the glass turning the scene into a blur of electric green and lavender. I ached to see Pietrik and Halina again, but there in that old house, nothing could hurt me, a whole ocean between me and my troubles.
I dressed and wandered downstairs in search of my sister and hot coffee. Finding neither in the kitchen, I hesitated at the kitchen window and watched Caroline in the garden. She wore canvas garden gloves, her hair caught back with a scarf as she tugged weeds from soil around the thorny stalks. Caroline’s pig lay sleeping openmouthed a stone’s throw away under a lilac bush, pawing at the ground as if running in her sleep. Should I join them? I was in no mood for a lecture.
Caroline spotted me at the window and waved to me with her trowel.
I had no choice but to step out the kitchen door.
“Have you seen Zuzanna?” I asked.
“She and Serge took Mother to Woodbury. Come and weed, dear. It’s good for the soul.”
So is coffee, I thought.
I walked along the gravel path and knelt beside Caroline. The house rose above us like a great white ship from a sea of purple lilacs waving at its base. You’ve never seen lilacs in such colors, from deep aubergine—almost black—to the palest lavender.
“Sorry I took the last of the coffee,” she said. “The early risers got to it first.”
A dig at me? I ignored it.
“I think you designed the perfect garden,” I said.
“Oh, it was Mother. We’d just moved in, and Father called the landscapers to come plant a garden, and they surprised Mother when they asked for a garden plan. She took a pencil and sketched the design of the Aubusson rug in the library and handed it to the men. Works perfectly well, I think.”
From where I knelt, the scent of rose and lilac was almost solid. “Such a beautiful fragrance.”
Caroline pulled out a dandelion, hairy root and all, and tossed it in her bucket. “The scent is strongest in the morning. Once the sun is overhead, things dry out and flowers keep the fragrance to themselves.”
Why had I not spoken to Caroline about her garden before? We had a common love of flowers, after all. I slid a trowel from her bucket and pulled a green sapling from the earth with a satisfying pop. We worked without speaking, spearing the dark earth with our trowels, the only sounds the birds chattering in nearby trees and Caroline’s pig’s gentle snore.
“I must say, you’re the rock of your family, Kasia dear.”
How nice it was to hear that praise! “I suppose.”
“I knew the first time I saw you onstage in Warsaw that you have a special strength.”
“Not really. Since my mother…”
Caroline rested one canvas-gloved hand on my arm. “Seems like your mother was a remarkable woman, very much like you. Strong. Resilient. I’m sure you loved her very much.”
I nodded.
“I thought I might die when my father passed away. It was so long ago, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish he were here.” Caroline waved toward the lilac bushes that swayed above us. “He loved these. It’s a lovely reminder of him, but terribly sad too, to see his favorite Abraham Lincoln lilacs blossom without him.”
Caroline wiped her cheek with the back of her gardening glove, leaving a dark smudge below one eye, then pulled off her gloves.
“But it’s fitting in a way—Father loved the fact that a lilac only blossoms after a harsh winter.”
Caroline reached over and smoothed the hair back from my brow with a light touch. How many times had my mother done that? “It’s a miracle all this beauty emerges after such hardship, don’t you think?”
Suddenly, water came to my eyes, and the grass swam in front of me. I could only nod.
Caroline smiled. “I’ll have Mr. Gardener pack you up some lilac saplings to plant back in Lublin.”
“No need to pack any for Zuzanna,” I said.
Caroline sat back on her heels. “I wanted to tell you sooner—”
“It’s fine. It’s good, really. At first I was sad, but you’ve helped her in ways I never could. To get well. To raise a child of her own someday. My mother would have liked that. I don’t know how to thank you.”
Caroline pressed her hand over mine. “That’s not necessary, Kasia dear.”
“Zuzanna and I have taken so much from you. I wish I had something to give.”
“You’ve been good for all of us, especially Mother.”
We continued weeding in silence. I would miss Bethlehem.
Caroline turned to me. “Well, there is one thing, Kasia…”
“What is it?”
“Something I’ve been meaning to discuss with you.”
“Of course.”
“It concerns, well, someone…someone you used to know.”
“Anything.”
“Well, Herta Oberheuser, actually.”
Just the name made me feel sick to my stomach.
I steadied myself, one hand to the grass. “What about her?”
“I am terribly sorry to even bring it up, but my sources tell me she may have been released early—”
I stood, dizzy, trowel in hand. “Impossible. The Germans can’t let her out…” Why could I not breathe?
“As far as we know, Americans did this. Back in 1952. Quietly.”
I paced toward the house and then back. “She’s been out all this time? Why would they do that? There was a trial—”