“Do you think maybe...” Paulina’s voice had trailed off. “Maybe she won’t wake up again?”
It would be a small mercy for all of us. But I didn’t say that to Paulina, who I knew, despite my mother’s many shortcomings, wretched ideologies, and propensity to ruin lives, cared for the woman who had employed her for decades.
“I don’t know,” I’d told her, taking her hand. “It’s possible she’s awake now, but tired in a way that won’t allow her to respond to us.”
I entered the room now and put a log on the fire, then moved to the diminished form of my mother, shifting bedding carefully so I could see if it, and her clothing, needed to be changed out.
“You should leave.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of my mother’s raspy voice cutting through the quiet.
“I intend to,” I said, pulling the bedding back into place. “Are you hungry? Would you like Paulina or me to bring you some broth?”
“She will never go with you.”
I ignored her. There was no point in arguing.
“Your Kitty Cat,” she whispered, “is no longer yours. She is mine. She is Germany’s.”
I pasted a smile on my face, ignoring her and picking up the water glass on her bedside table. “I’ll have Paulina bring you some fresh water and broth.”
It took everything I had not to slam the door after me when I left. But it would do no good. She would always have the upper hand, because she didn’t care. And somewhere deep inside me was still the little girl who just wanted her mother to love her.
The scent of dinner filled the main floor and I inhaled, smiling as I descended the stairs. At least after my mother was tended to Paulina and I would share a nice meal, maybe partake in a bottle of wine from my father’s collection, and perhaps even play a rousing game or two of cards.
“We need to warm up the broth,” I said as I opened the door to the kitchen. “She’s awa—”
I stopped, my eyes moving from the worried look on Paulina’s face to the shocked one on the face of the young woman standing at the far end of the kitchen.
And then a name. One I hadn’t heard spoken in ten years.
“Gigi?” she whispered.
I exhaled, my heart pounding in my chest, my knees so weak I had to reach for the countertop beside me.
“Hi, Kitty Cat.”
38
“I don’t understand,”Catrin said, looking from me to Paulina and then back again.
But I couldn’t speak. I was too busy staring at her. Taking in the young woman she’d grown into. The soft angles of her face, wide blue eyes, and elegant presence. I wanted to rush to her. Throw my arms around her. Tell her I was sorry and grab her hand, dragging her to the address hidden in my bag so that we could escape this place. This—
Home.
The word flashed in my mind and I suddenly remembered that before William, the only sense of home I’d had was when I’d been with Cat in our wing of the house. We were one another’s sanctuary. It was only when I was with her that I felt I belonged.
But the way she was looking at me now...
“I don’t understand,” Catrin said, her voice harder now as she sank into one of the kitchen chairs and looked to Paulina. “Can you please explain what’s going on.”
“Of course,” Pauline said, pulling the pot of broth from the icebox and setting it on the stove to warm. “But first, why don’t you go say hello to your mother and bring her some water while she’s awake.”
She took a clean glass from the cupboard, filled it with water, and held it out to Catrin, who stared at it for a moment before nodding and getting to her feet.
She stopped beside me, her blue eyes, the same color as mine, skimming across my face. And then she leaned forward and kissed me first on one cheek, then the other.
“Willkomen zu Hause, Schwester,”she murmured, and then disappeared out the door.
