My phone sits on the nightstand, screen dark, heavy with that sense of waiting. I don’t need to check to know I texted him. I remember the cool air, the stars, the tremor in my thumb when I pressed send. Still, I reach for it. There it is—1 new message.His name. I sit up, the blanket slipping around my waist, and open it. A voice message.
“Amelka Katarzyna. That’s beautiful. Katarzyna means pure, doesn’t it? I remember you mumbling something about it under the covers once, when you said you weren’t living up to that purity.”
His laugh is light, melodic. It makes my pulse skip.
“Seems fitting. Everything about you matches the concept, true, pure, in everything you do.”
He sighs, pauses, collects his thoughts.
“Tell your brother congratulations.”
Silence for a moment, then—
“Thank you for sharing her with me. Names have gravity. You’ve just given another one to the world that carries yours, a light in the dark.”
Then, a deeper sigh, the kind that asks whether he should say the next part, the part I left unspoken. But he does.
“I miss you, Kasia. We're still under the same sky, but it feels smaller without you to share it.”
There it is again, the thing I told myself I’d stopped waiting for. His poetry. The way he can turn a name into prose. My throat tightens. My heart feels both too full and completely hollow. I want to answer. To tell him how Amelka’s tiny fingers already curl around your heart, how Piotr cried more than Aga, how I still can’t look at the sky without thinking of him. But I don’t. I just whisper it aloud instead.
“I miss you too.”
Chapter 75
Shh, Malenka
The morning is bright. The kind that feels like a gift after a long winter. Coffee thick in the air, sunlight spilling across Mama’s table. I’m still in yesterday’s clothes, hair a tangle, mascara somewhere near my chin but I don’t care.
“I’m just glad I had a place to crash,” I say, laughing. “I had way too much to drink. I think Piotr won the medal for most shots, though.”
Tata chuckles, buttering bread. “He has a garage full of cars to work on today. I hope the hangover’s worth it.”
Mama waves him off. “He’ll survive. Aga looked so happy, didn’t she? Finally, some rest.”
We’re all smiling. Natalia wanders in next, hair wild, face pale, still wearing her beauty mask halfway over one eye so she can see out of the other.
“Coffee,” she croaks, pointing. “Before I murder.”
The kitchen erupts in laughter, it feels good, normal, light. Then the phone rings.
Mama picks it up mid-sentence, still laughing.
“Halo? Aga! How are you, kochanie—”
She stops. Her smile collapses.
“What?” she says, her voice suddenly thin, foreign.
Silence.
The mug slips from her hand, shattering on the floor. Then the phone. She drops with it, knees hitting tile.
“Mama?” Tata rushes from the stove, grabbing her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
She’s trying to speak, but the words come out broken, half-breaths, sobs, pieces of sound.
I’m already moving. “Mama, look at me. What is it? Talk to me.”
