The Memory Keeper of Kyiv (88)

Nick closed the front door, then turned and locked eyes with her. “Just a few more minutes to get them going down the street,” he said in a low voice.

Cassie nodded, pushed the door shut, and turned to her little girl. “Tell me what you’re packing, Birdie.” They were the same words she’d uttered to Bobby to soothe her. She mustered up a tremulous smile for her daughter as the ambulance sirens screeched outside the house.





28





KATYA





Ukraine, February 1933





Katya curled around Halya’s body, trying her best to keep the baby warm under their stack of blankets. The cold, an ever-present force, couldn’t be kept at bay by their small fire, and Katya missed the warmth of her sister or Pavlo curled behind her.

Katya talked to Halya as she held up the picture of her and Alina from Olha and Boryslav’s wedding. “See, Halya, this is your mother. She was the prettiest girl in the village, and you look just like her.”

The picture shook in Katya’s hand. Sisters forever. When she closed her eyes, she could hear her sister’s clear voice uttering those words.

“Sisters forever,” Katya whispered.

Halya’s big eyes stared at the photograph. She was almost fourteen months now, though she didn’t look it. Katya sang songs, told stories, counted, and did everything she could to brighten Halya’s world, but still she worried it wasn’t enough. Halya couldn’t crawl or walk, and she only babbled a few nonsensical words, but sometimes, when Halya smiled, tiny glimpses of Alina appeared in her face. Katya lived for the joy of those moments, and she knew Kolya felt the same. His love for Halya, evident in the way he rocked her to sleep and tickled her to make her laugh, was what kept him going. The state had taken so much from them, but their love survived, even in the darkest times.

Knocks on the door broke the silence, and Lena burst into the house, her red face wild with rivers of tears and a tiny baby nestled in her arms.

“Lena! What’s this about?” Katya tucked the blankets around Halya, then wrapped a shawl around her shoulders. She pulled a chair up next to the pich and ushered her cousin toward it. Kolya put one of their precious pieces of dismantled barn wood in it and built the fire up.

“I had to come here. I couldn’t go home.” Instead of sitting, she paced erratically around the room.

“Where did you get this child?” Kolya asked. His hair, rumpled from sleep, reminded Katya so much of Pavlo that a pang of longing shot through her. She had to avert her gaze before she could gather her thoughts.

“I found him. I walked to town to try to trade for some food, and I heard him crying in a house I passed. The whole family had passed away. Mother. Father. Two other children. His dead mother held him in her arms on her bed. If I hadn’t found him when I did, he would have died like them.”

Katya peered down at the baby in Lena’s arms. From its tiny stature, she guessed it couldn’t have been more than a few months old. Blankets wound around it until only large eyes peeped out of the gaunt face. Ukraine did not produce rosy, chubby-cheeked babies anymore.

“So why did you come here?” Kolya asked.

Lena dropped her gaze. “I can’t take care of a baby. And you already have Halya here. I thought it might be easier…” She looked at Katya and trailed off.

Katya closed her eyes and saw the tiny black shoe poking out of the woodpile. She shuddered and pulled her shawl closer. “We’ll take the baby.”

“What? Katya, I don’t know how we’ll care for another child.” Kolya glanced over at Halya. “We are hardly providing well enough for this one.”

“She is loved!” Lena cried. “That’s the most important thing. Here, hold him.”

Lena thrust the baby into Katya’s arms, and an ache stabbed through her womb. This slight boy reminded her so much of Viktor. She touched his soft cheek, and he stared up at her with big blue eyes.

Lena wiped her nose and backed out the door before Kolya could protest or ask any further questions. “Thank you, Katya. You are your mother’s daughter, no doubt. I have to go now, before Ruslan realizes I’ve been gone too long.”

The baby gave a soft mewl and Katya gasped as raw emotion swelled in her throat. Her rational mind warned her that this was a terrible idea. She’d already lost one baby, and now she had Halya to care for as her own. But a long dead part of her came back to life as she looked down at the sweet child. How could she not try to save a baby so much like her own?





For three weeks, she fed both children. Her own milk long gone, she’d prepare a watery gruel consisting of ground cattail roots, acorns, and tree bark. Some days, Kolya would come home with something caught in the snares, and Katya would make a meat broth for the babies. But game became harder and harder to find. The days stretched on until a week passed since they’d had any broth or meat.

Kolya walked in the door empty handed. “Nothing again today.”

“He won’t eat anything.” Katya set the baby she’d christened Denys, after her lost little cousin, down on the bed and picked up Halya. She eagerly lapped up the gruel Denys had turned his head away from. “I’m afraid his body cannot process it any longer.”

Kolya didn’t respond. Despite her best efforts, the baby boy was fading before their eyes. Katya winced as she watched his attempt to smile, his thin lips momentarily curving up to look more like a grimace than a grin. His large head wobbled with the valiant effort, his neck no longer strong enough to support it. Exhausted from the hard work, he lay back down on the pillow, too weak to even cry.