Page 67 of Where the Waves Kiss the Shore
“Beata insisted on learning how to greet you in English, even though we explained you spoke Polish before you left.”
“Thank you, Beata. Your English is very good.” Kasia reverted to Polish. It was hard enough to immerse herself without switching back and forth. She appreciated the gesture from the five-year-old though.
“Will you teach us more English?” Anna took her hand, and Beata followed suit on the other side.
Kasia hid her surprise and enjoyed the sensation of the small, warm hands in hers.
Stef’s eyes shone as he picked up her bags and led the way to the car. “Your aunt is here for Prababka’s funeral, remember.”
The girls both assumed sad faces, though they didn’t look all that sincere. They chatted away all the way home, telling Kasia about their best subjects at school and how they had learned to ride their bicycles. When they pulled up at the family home, the girls ran inside, shouting their arrival, but Kasia hesitated at door.
“Go on in. They’ll be pleased to see you.” Her brother squeezed her arm.
“I know.” She shouldered her bag and headed toward the welcome that awaited her. “Mama, Tata. How are you?”
Seeing them in person made her feel something at last, even if the emotions were mixed. She had grown up loving her parents dearly, and what she saw as their betrayal when her grandmother had denounced her had cut deeply. She didn’t know if she could ever get over that, but they would always be her family.
Her mother pulled her tightly to her, and she wished she could just enjoy the comfort without all their difficult history.Her dad was a mess. He looked way older than his sixty-four years. His eyes were swollen and red, and he almost collapsed into her arms.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Tata.” She held her father awkwardly as he sobbed into her shoulder.
“I know she was almost ninety, and she had a good life. But we miss her so much, Kasia.”
Kasia wished more than anything she could join her family in grieving, but she didn’t have any emotion to give. She could feel for her father in his loss, though, and that was what she would focus on while she was here.
The funeral was the next day, so she’d barely had time to get her suit out of her luggage before she was walking behind the coffin as they left the church. The funeral had been emotional. Kasia’s dad had tried his hardest to deliver his eulogy, but he’d broken down, and Stef had taken over. It was full of memories about how her grandmother had kept the family together when her dad had been arrested and beyond.
She understood why there was such great love for her within the family, but she couldn’t feel it herself. Her grandmother had broken that. She felt as though she was hovering above the scene, looking down on others’ grief.
As they got outside into the sunshine, two familiar warm hands grasped hers, and she smiled at her two nieces. Meeting them and getting to know them better had made the trip more than worthwhile. Anna was a thinker, always asking questions, and Beata was already a little rebel. The eulogy had included mention of when she’d cut all her hair off when left unsupervised, and how upset her great grandmother had been about the loss of her blond locks. Beata had grinned throughout the retelling; Kasia liked her style. Her cheeky smile reminded her of Tierney, even though she was trying not to think about her.
The two girls barely left her side for the remainder of her stay. Magda tried to shoo them away, but they constantly asked about her own childhood in Gdansk. She answered them as thoroughly as she could, often at odds with Stef about which sibling had gotten the other into trouble. In truth, she had often been the one pushing the boundaries of what they could get away with. She’d been a carefree child until her family’s rejection. Life after that had been filled with hard work and responsibility, always with a side order of shame her secret would come out, and she’d be rejected again. She’d forgotten about the little girl who loved to climb trees. With Tierney, she’d found fun again. It was difficult to take life too seriously when she was around.
“If you were happy here, why did you leave and never come back?” Anna asked.
She rubbed her hand over her forehead, wondering how honest she could be.
“Aunt Kasia wanted to work in big hotels, and there were none here, so she had to go,” her brother said without looking at her.
Kasia’s heart sank as she was pushed back into the closet.
“Why don’t you ask her about the fanciest hotel she ever worked in?” he asked.
She hadn’t expected a full-blown explanation of her grandmother’s bigoted opinions, but she and the girls deserved better than having it glossed over. She halfheartedly explained what a penthouse was, and why pools on the top floor didn’t leak into all the bedrooms, while reflecting nothing had really changed. She still wasn’t able to be herself, even with the matriarch gone.
“Why don’t you have your own children?” Anna asked.
Stef turned as if to answer, but Kasia wasn’t about to fill the girl with more lies. “I never met the right person until recently. And then it didn’t work out.”
“Don’t you have a husband?”
“No, I’ve never had a husband.”
The girls seemed to accept that at face value, and the conversation turned to Inishderry. Kasia described island life with enthusiasm tinged with a bittersweet sadness. “If you come and visit one day, you can see the beaches for yourselves. We can swim, and catch crabs, and go for rides on my friend Joey’s boat.”
“Please, Daddy, can we go?”
“Can we? Can we?”
