Chapter 31
Stefan was waiting at the arrivals gate when Kasia stepped through the doors. He looked older in person than on their video calls. She was sure she must have aged too, in the near decade since they’d seen each other. She embraced him silently.
“It’s been too long, Kasia,” he whispered.
She pulled back, surprised to see his eyes wet. “Hey, I’m here now. I’m sorry about Babcia.” She was sorry for her family’s grief if nothing else. When Stef had called with the news her grandmother had passed, she’d felt nothing but a vague sense of relief.
He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and turned. “Girls, come and meet your ciocia.”
Two children standing at a vending machine turned and ran over. The taller girl arrived first, her pigtails swinging as she ran. “Cze??, Ciociu.”
“Hi, Anna, it’s good to meet you at last.”
The smaller niece, Beata, made a dramatic arrival by crashing into her sister, who didn’t so much as flinch, clearly accustomed to the chaos.
“Welcome home, Auntie Kasia.”
Her English was slow and carefully delivered. She wore her hair in a short blond bob, and her grin could only be described as cheeky.
“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 Gdańsk. 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?”
Stef rolled his eyes at her. “Maybe someday. It’s a long way from here.”
“But Auntie Kasia has traveled to be here.”
“Can we go on a boat?”
“No, we’d have to fly on a plane.”
“I like flying.” Beata spread her arms and crashed around the room.
Kasia took the opportunity to slip out and pack her bag.
“You’re leaving us again.”
Engrossed as she was in folding her clothes, her mother’s voice made her jump. “Of course, I’m going home.” Why did her mother have to make it an accusation?
“This is your home, Katerina. You belong with us.”
She’d had enough of avoiding the issues between them. “Do I really? So you’d be happy if I brought my girlfriend home to meet the family?”
Her mother paled, her hands twisted in front of her, and she didn’t say anything.
“And if we chose to have children together, you’d welcome them and their two mothers as you do your other grandchildren?”
Kasia stood tall, shoulders back, even though it hurt. She might be leaving, but she wasn’t running away.
Her mother stepped inside the door and closed it behind her. “There’s no need to shout. We’re not like Mama was. We understand what you are, Kasia, and that we have to deal with that. It’s not easy for us either, you know.”
“What I am? What you have to deal with?” She didn’t care how loud her voice was. “I’m your daughter.”
“I mean your lifestyle choices. We don’t have to approve, but we can accept that you have these inclinations. Because we love you, Kasia.”
“Real love is about loving someone for who they are, not despite it. How do you imagine my life back here, Mother? I’d be allowed to sneak around and fulfill my unnatural urges as long as I maintain a veneer of respectability? If I hide the person I love in a closet of shame?”
The door opened, and her dad slipped in. “What’s happening? I heard shouting.”
“Mother is just explaining to me that I’m lucky you’re prepared to tolerate my existence, and that I should come running home in gratitude as long as I understand that you’re dealing with me and what I am.”
“Stop being dramatic, Kasia.” Her mother reached for her, but she stepped back.
“All these years I convinced myself that it was Grandmother who was the problem, and that you didn’t dare to stand up to her. But you’re just as bad.” She let all her years of frustration out. “I’ll never be who you wish I was, and I’ve spent too much of my life hating myself for that. I deserve to be proud of who I am. I live in a place where people like me and fully accept who I am—not tolerate, accept. And I’m going to start accepting myself too.”
She stood again, feeling full of power in front of her family for the first time.
“Until the day comes when you can say the same, I won’t be back. You’re always welcome to come and visit me in my world and see that I’m not hated, or derided, or ashamed, but I don’t think you will. You’d rather I hang my head and live in silence than be happy, proud, and in love. And that’s incredibly sad. For you, anyway.”
When her parents didn’t seem to have anything to add, she grabbed her bag and walked out of her room with her head held high.
“Stefan let’s get moving. I’ve a flight to catch.”
“We could’ve stayed and tried to talk things through,” Stef said as soon as they were in his car.
She was annoyed he’d left the girls at home, so he could grill her on the journey. “And what possible resolution could you imagine, Stef?”
He kept his eyes on the road and shook his head slightly.
“Exactly. They had the chance to make things different, but it was the same old story.” She sighed. “And you too. You might love me, but you can’t accept me. You kept me from telling the girls anything you were uncomfortable with.”
They continued in awkward silence for a while.
“My invitation to you and Magda and the girls stands. They could do with seeing a bit more of the world than this city.”
He shrugged. “Have you invited them to a home where you may not have a future?”
She regretted sharing that with him, but she didn’t want to think about it yet. Her phone remained switched off in her bag. She could only deal with one life event at a time.
“Even if it doesn’t work out with the hotel, you can still visit. There are plenty of other islands.” She said it casually, but she knew nowhere else in the world would ever have the pull she felt to Inishderry.
“I’ll see what I can do. If I save all my holidays for next summer, it could be possible.”
She squeezed his hand on the gear stick just as he pulled into the airport drop off area. “Please try. I don’t want it to be another nine years. I miss you, and I want to see my nieces again soon.” She gave him a small smile. “But I’m going to live my life out and proud, so be prepared for that if you come.”
He pulled up outside departures. “I want you to be a part of our lives.” He took her hand. “Fully, not in secret or half lies. I love you, Kasia, for who you are. I’m sorry I’m not stronger in showing that. I’ll work on it, I promise.”
With tears stinging her eyes, she entered the departure hall after their farewell. She got through security quickly and found somewhere to order a coffee, then she sat down and pulled out her phone. She wondered if she’d missed anything in the last week. The repairs to the roof and damaged rooms would have continued in her absence, but what other news might await her? If there was no future for her on Inishderry, she’d be starting once more from scratch.
Visiting her family had been a reminder she could leave everything she knew and still survive. But it also reminded her how painful and heartbreaking that could be. She drew breath through her teeth as the phone screen lit up. She would get through this.