The Things We Cannot Say(100)

One breath at a time, Alina.

Breathe in. Oh! I found some air!

Breathe out. That will be the last of me. Now I will suffocate.

Breathe in. Oh! There is a little more air after all.

“No.” I choked out the words he needed, even if I didn’t believe them myself at the time. “I don’t think this is how they feel. I think they are freed from feelings like this. I think they are waiting for you on the other side, and they are safe and at peace.”

I felt him relax then, even though his only answer was a muffled sob.



CHAPTER 34

Alice


As Zofia and I begin our second trip toward Trzebinia, she chatters as she drives—falling automatically into tour guide mode. I keep zoning out as she’s speaking. All of this information really is interesting—but the truth is my mind is elsewhere.

I’m thinking about these wide-open days ahead of me, and the fact that I have absolutely no idea what to do with them. And even more disturbing, Mom’s words on the phone last night are swirling around my mind, giving me all sorts of crazy ideas.

Sometimes you have to smash the damn door down.

“What’s the plan?” Zofia asks me, when we turn off the highway into the little town. I sigh and lean back in my chair. I’m about to say I don’t know, but then it occurs to me that in all of the places we visited yesterday, only one revealed a lead.

“To the clinic again, please,” I say.

I ask Zofia to stay in the car this time, hoping that Lia will be more open to me if I go in to the clinic alone.

“Cousin to cousin?” Zofia suggests with a grin.

“Something like that,” I say. I’m sick with nerves remembering how determined Lia was yesterday that she couldn’t help me, but I force myself to march into the clinic. Lia actually groans when she sees me in the reception area, and I hold up my hands as if that will placate her.

“Come with me,” she says abruptly, and she swipes the headset from her head to throw it onto the desk.

I wave to her companion and offer a weak, “Hi.”

“Hello,” he says uncertainly. I follow Lia down the hallway, then turn into the meeting room.

“I told you—” she greets me with audible frustration, and I hold my hands up again and try to make her understand.

“Listen,” I say, very quietly. “You’re my only lead, and I can tell that you love your grandmother just as much as I love mine, so I understand why you don’t want to help me. But I hope you can understand my position too. The only concrete thing I’ve found since I arrived here is her childhood home—which isn’t giving up any secrets—and you. So—okay, there really does seem to be some confusion around my Pa and your Tomasz Slaski—but if you can spare me a few minutes, perhaps we can resolve that. You said Emilia still visits his grave, right?”

“She does,” Lia says. Sadness leaps into her gaze, and in that instant, I know she’s not lying about this. “Every month. She used to go more often when she was younger. He was her hero.”

“Okay,” I say, then I suck in a breath and ask hopefully, “So, can you tell me where the grave is?” Lia hesitates just a little, and I adjust the strap of my handbag because I’m too nervous to be still while I wait for her answer. The silence stretches some more, and I try to make a joke. “I promise not to camp out there for a month and bully my way into seeing your grandmother. I’d just like to see it.”

“Fine,” Lia sighs. She walks across the room to a cabinet, and withdraws a piece of paper and a pen. She sets both onto the board table in the center of the room, then scrawls down an address. “It’s not easy to find—you have to drive out of town. Follow the main road—it curves around behind the hill you can see to the east from pretty much any point in town. There’s an old property there—this is the street address. We drive all the way onto the farm, but my grandmother has the only key to the gate, so you’ll have to park in the driveway and jump the fence.”

I know exactly the place she’s describing—there’s no way it can be anywhere but Babcia’s family home. Still, I’m too nervous to get my hopes up, so I interrupt her gently to ask, “Is this S′wie?tojan′ska, 4?” I say. Predictably, I totally muddle the pronunciation on the street name—but not so much that Lia doesn’t understand it, because her gaze narrows.

“I don’t understand.” She scowls. “You already know where it is?”

“That house,” I say, but my voice comes out a little husky, so I pause to clear my throat, then I ask, “Why is the grave behind that house?”

“The house is abandoned—it has been since the war, not even the communists wanted it,” Lia tells me. “But he’s not buried there at the house, he’s buried on the hill behind it. I’m just directing you to the house because it’s much easier to get to the grave from that side than from the town side now. There are new houses all along the hill on this side so the path is blocked.”

“But that particular spot...? Why there at that hill?”

Lia passes me the paper and frowns.

“I have no idea. Now tell me—how did you know that address?”

“It was my grandmother’s childhood home,” I tell her, and her eyes widen. There’s an awkward pause while she ponders this, then Lia concedes, “Well, that’s quite a coincidence.”