75. Shh, Malenka #2
I close my eyes for a second, steady myself. “We’ll find something. His suit from the wedding, maybe? You don’t have to think about that now.”
She nods, still not really here.
On the drive home, the silence feels heavier. The kids are waiting, Dominik at the door, Amelka in his arms, Zosia pressed against his side. He doesn’t ask how it went. He just takes Aga’s bag, helps her inside, and holds her when she starts to shake again.
I stand there for a moment, watching him, watching them.
And I think: this is what love looks like when it’s still breathing through grief, the holding, the not letting go.
But inside me, something’s gone quiet and cold, a part of me still sitting in that office, signing Piotr’s name for the last time.
Grief makes time strange. Hours blur, stretch and collapse. The world keeps moving, and I keep pretending to move with it.
The next day, after the endless phone calls and the dinner where no one eats, I go to Dominik’s.
Part of me thinks maybe being near him will help, that maybe he’ll understand the shape of the silence inside me.
He opens the door, eyes dull from sleeplessness.
Zosia’s with Mama and Tata tonight to give Dominik some rest and to keep them distracted; the house is spotless, too still.
“Hey,” I say softly. “Thought I’d come by. Didn’t want you to be alone.”
He nods but doesn’t answer. There’s a hammer in his hand, he tells me he’s been fixing the hinge on the pantry door. It squeaks once when he opens it, a sound too small for the weight in the room.
I set my bag down and wait for him to look at me, to say something, anything. But he doesn’t. He just moves from one small task to another, washing dishes that are already clean, tightening screws, sweeping a floor that doesn’t need it.
“Dominik,” I start, voice low. “We don’t have to talk. I just… thought maybe we could sit.”
He doesn’t turn around. “I can’t,” he says finally. “Not yet.”
There’s no anger in it, just exhaustion. A wall. I nod, though something inside me caves a little.
“I’ll go then,” I whisper.
He nods again. Doesn’t stop me, doesn’t follow. Maybe that’s okay. Grief’s a language we all learn differently. He builds walls. I look for hands.
I barely remember the drive from Dominik’s to Aga’s. The city feels washed-out and muffled, like someone pressed a hand over my ears. When I knock, the door opens slow, and Aga stands there in sweatpants and a stretched-out shirt that probably isn’t hers. Her hair is unbrushed, her eyes empty.
“Kasia.” She barely makes a sound.
I step inside and close the door behind us.
The house is still. Mama and Tata have the kids, and without their usual chaos the place feels hollow, like something essential has drained out of it.
Aga sits on the couch as if she’s afraid to sink into it, hands trembling around a throw pillow she keeps smoothing and smoothing.
“I’m trying,” she whispers. “It hasn’t even been two days, I think. Hard to keep track. But I’m trying.”
“I know,” I say, even though I don’t. No one knows how anyone survives this.
She stares ahead at nothing. “Do you remember our first date? He picked me up in that ridiculous car, the one he fixed himself. It was so loud the whole street heard. And he kept worrying I’d think he was showing off.
But he’d cleaned it for hours. I could tell.
” Her voice wavers. “He wore that navy shirt I hated. The one he said made him look ‘athletic.’ God, he tried so hard.”
Her breath breaks, then her whole body folds inward. All the lines of her collapse, and the grief takes over.
“I’ll make tea,” I say, because if I stand here any longer I’ll crumble with her.
I move into the kitchen, pretending my hands aren’t shaking.
The kettle feels like it’s deliberately dragging time.
My eyes wander to the bookshelf in the hallway, and the familiar silver glint catches me off guard.
Piotr’s old lighter. The cheap metal is scratched from years of one-handed flicking.
He used it on every walk to every gig, cigarette glued to his mouth even when he promised Aga he’d quit.
I pick it up, roll the weight between my fingers. “He always used this,” I say. “Even when Mama begged him to stop smoking, he’d just laugh and say, ‘Relax, it makes me look cool.’”
Aga huffs a broken laugh behind me. “He was always trying to be the cool guy.”
I turn the lighter over, thumb finding the grooves worn by him. “Do you remember that leather jacket? The one he’d throw on for shows?”
“Yeah,” she says softly. “He kept it, he wouldn't even let me donate it when Father Marek ran that charity for secondhand clothes.”
I look up fast. “He kept it? I thought he got rid of that years ago.”
She wipes her face with the heel of her palm. “It’s in the closet. I haven’t gone in there. I can’t. The only thing I’ve touched is the shirt he wore for the party. It still smells like him. I know it’ll fade and I…” Her voice breaks open again. “I’m not ready to lose that yet.”
I sit beside her and pull her into a hug. She sobs against my shoulder, clutching my shirt like it’s the only anchor left in the world. I hold her until the shaking slows, both of us breathing through it.
Aga inhales unsteadily. “Go,” she murmurs. “Get the jacket. I want you to have it if you want it. I just… I can’t go in there.”
I squeeze her hand and nod.
The hallway feels like a tunnel as I walk toward their bedroom.
The room smells untouched, maybe she’s been sleeping on the couch.
When I open the closet, the air hits me hard, his cologne, the faint ghost of cigarette smoke he never quite managed to quit, and that warm undertone that was Piotr.
His shirts are still there: soft from years, random band tees from when we were teenagers, a beanie he wore in twenty-degree weather like it made a difference, twenty-year-old gym shorts he insisted were “perfectly good.”
Then I see it. The leather jacket. Black, broken-in, heavy as the memory of him in it.
I slide it off the hanger, and the weight nearly pulls my arms down.
It’s exactly as I remembered, solid, warm, lived-in.
Without thinking, I slip it on. The punch of it is immediate.
The scent, the heft, the way it wraps around my shoulders like he’s standing there, arm slung over me, laughing at some joke he thought was funnier than it was.
My throat closes. I touch the lapel with shaking fingers, smoothing the scuffed leather. The line he used to throw at me every time he let me wear it comes out, without thought.
“I won’t get my makeup shit on it, Piotr.”
My vision blurs. I lean my forehead against the closet doorframe as my knees threaten to give out, the jacket holding me up in a moment I can’t hold myself.
For the first time since the call came, I cry for real, cracked open, guttural.
The kind of grief that feels like something tearing inside you and doesn’t care who hears it.
Behind me, Aga calls my name, voice wrecked, and I realize neither of us are going to survive this without the other.
When I get home, the house is dark and still. I sit on the couch, phone in hand, staring at the name I shouldn’t touch.
Rafe Ashton.
For a long time I just hold it there, the urge fighting the shame, the ache fighting the logic. But grief has no logic, and my heart’s already made the decision. I press call. It rings once. Twice.
Then his voice, warm and familiar. “Kas.”
That’s all it takes. The sound of it breaks me wide open. I can’t even form words at first. The sobs come hard and sudden, shaking through me, months of held breath tearing their way out, all the regret, the worry, and now the loss.
“Hey, I’m here. Just breathe,” he says softly, patiently, not pushing. “What happened?”
I tell him everything. About Piotr. About Aga.
About the jack, the call, Mama’s scream, Natalia’s disbelief.
My voice catches on every detail, but I don’t stop.
I tell him how Dominik shut down, how I tried to stay strong, how I can’t stop seeing it when I close my eyes.
He doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t try to fix it.
Just breathes with me, until my own breathing starts to match his.
When the silence finally comes, it’s different, gentle not empty.
“Kasia… I’m so fucking sorry,” he says. His voice cracks on the last word. “You don’t have to carry it alone. I’m here, okay?”
“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper.
“Here’s what you do,” he says gently. “You breathe, and then you give it all to me. Everything. I can handle it. Scream if you need to, sleep, ramble about anything—or nothing. You don’t have to say a thing. We can just sit here, together. Whatever you need.”
It’s such a simple thing. But in that moment, it feels like grace. So I sit there, curled around the phone, listening to the sound of him breathing on the other end, proof that somewhere, the world is still kind enough to hold me for a little while.