“She’ll sleep for a few hours,” she said. “The talking and coughing will have worn her out.”
I nodded, gave the woman that had given birth to me a last look, and turned on my heel.
By habit, I walked down the hall and took a right, hurrying down another corridor, anxious to put as much distance as I could between me and my mother. I was halfway to the door at the end of the hallway when I stopped, realizing where I was heading. My childhood bedroom.
The door was closed, and I paused as I reached for the knob, bracing myself for what was on the other side.
Taking a breath, I opened the door and stood on the threshold, staring in wonder.
It was like a time capsule. Everything in its place, as if I’d never left. As if I were coming back at any moment to pick up the book lying open on my vanity, or snuggle up to the white teddy bear nestled beside my pillow. Mila, I’d called it. A gift from my aunt when I’d turned four.
The air was musty, but the layer of dust I expected wasn’t there.
“She makes me dust the entire house.”
I turned at the sound of Paulina’s voice.
“How would she know?” I asked. “It doesn’t look like she gets around much anymore.”
“She doesn’t,” she said, running a hand down her uniform, which sagged on a body that had once been rounder, but was now thin from the scarcity of food. “But the truth is, I need to do something to fill the hours. She sleeps a lot, which, as I’m sure you can imagine, is a relief. When she’s awake she’s...”
“A tyrant?”
“Unpleasant.”
I smirked at the polite word and she shrugged.
“As I said, I’d have left,” she said, wandering my old room, her fingers trailing over ballerina figurines and tiny glass flowers in a tiny glass vase. “But I was willing to look the other way because of the protection it afforded me. And of course, in the beginning there was the matter of caring for your sister. And getting word to your aunt.”
“My aunt,” I said, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“Someone had to get information to her when you couldn’t. Let her know you were on your way. Had made it onto the boat safely.”
My mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“Do you know how your mother found me?” Paulina asked. “The year before you were born, she was asking around about nannies. Her good friend Alina recommended me. We’d met years before. At a meeting.”
Alina was the woman who had gone with me to America when I was sixteen.
“You knew,” I whispered.
“I knew,” she said.
“That’s why you didn’t seem shocked to see me at the door.”
“Oh. I was shocked. I knew you didn’t die ten years ago, but I never thought you’d return here.”
I sat on the bed that had once been my sanctuary.
“Once I learned Cat was alive... I had to. No matter what kind of danger it put me in. To know she’d been here all this time, waiting for me to make good on the promise I’d made to her the day I left... I couldn’t stay away.” I looked around the room again and then back at Paulina. “If you knew I was alive and with my aunt, how come you never let her know Catrin was alive?”
She sighed and sat in the armchair I used to curl up in with one of the many books I’d spent my allowance on.
“When the plan to get your sister out failed and the network fell apart, I took it upon myself to care for Cat the best I could, mostly from afar. I tried, Gisela. Oh, how I tried. Whenever your parents weren’t around, I told her stories I’d memorized and tried to feed her little brain the same things yours had been fed by your aunt. Kindness and empathy. Right and wrong. But Cat was—is—not you.”
“What does that mean, Paulina?”
“Did you look at the address I gave you? For where you could find her?”
