Chapter 6 #2
Occasionally, his eyes drifted toward me just long enough to remind me that the darkness I had seen in them that first day hadn’t been imagined. Then he would return to the paper as if I had never been there.
After breakfast, Krystyna would clear a space on the kitchen table and begin the day’s “school.”
Her version of teaching was inconsistent.
Some days she seemed genuinely enthusiastic, explaining things carefully, writing numbers on scrap paper, and asking me to copy them. Other days, she appeared distracted. Flipping through textbooks without much attention before eventually waving her hand and saying something like,
“You can read the rest yourself.”
I didn’t mind.
Most of the time, she allowed me to work alone at the table while she moved through the house doing other things. The house had its own rhythm, and I willingly moved with it.
Morning light would slide slowly across the wooden floorboards in the living room. The refrigerator hummed softly in the kitchen. Outside, the faint sounds of neighbors moving through their day drifted through the open windows. Compared to the orphanage, the quiet here felt almost peaceful.
In the afternoons, Krystyna usually lost interest in the idea of school entirely. “Go outside if you want,” she would say, or sometimes simply disappear into another room without explanation.
I spent most of those hours wandering through the house. Children who grow up in institutions develop a particular habit. We study environments carefully because environments determine safety. Doors, windows, sounds, patterns.
I learned the house the same way.
The creak of the third step on the staircase, the faint draft that slipped beneath the back door during colder evenings. The way sunlight moved across the living room wall at different hours of the day.
Sometimes I walked slowly down the hallway, my fingers brushing against the walls the same way they had the first day I arrived.
And sometimes my eyes drifted toward the locked door.
The padlock never moved. It stayed unexplained and exactly where it had been the first afternoon.
After a while, I stopped trying to touch it.
Not because curiosity had faded, but because curiosity doesn’t always need answers immediately.
You learn patience when you spend enough time watching people, little Ghost.
The house also had a small backyard, just a patch of uneven grass bordered by a fence.
Sometimes I sat there in the afternoons with one of the books Krystyna had given me, letting the air move softly around me while I read.
Those moments were… peaceful. More peaceful than anything I had ever experienced before.
Loneliness feels different when it’s chosen instead of enforced.
In the orphanage, solitude had been something that happened to me. Here, it was something I could step into voluntarily.
Krystyna seemed satisfied with my silence. Sometimes she even commented on it.
“You’re such a calm boy,” she would say, her voice warm with approval.
As if quietness were a personality trait rather than a survival strategy.
Bartosz rarely spoke to me at all.
Evenings were the only time our paths crossed consistently. He returned home late most days. The first sign of his arrival was usually the sound of the front door opening, followed by the dull thud of heavy boots being kicked off near the entrance.
Then the smell of alcohol would drift slowly through the house, faint at first but unmistakable once you recognize it. At eleven years old, I didn’t yet understand alcoholism. But I understood patterns, and Bartosz smelled like the same pattern every night.
Sometimes he sat in the living room watching television with the volume low while Krystyna moved around the kitchen preparing dinner. They rarely spoke much to each other. When they did, their voices were neutral. Like two people sharing a space rather than building a life together.
I ate at the table with them most nights.
Krystyna occasionally tried to draw me into conversation, asking me simple questions about the lessons or the books I was reading.
I answered with small gestures. A nod, a shake of my head, gesturing something with my hand.
She seemed to find that charming, whereas Bartosz never commented on my silence.
He just ate, drank, and eventually disappeared into another room with another glass of something that smelled strong and smoky.
Weeks passed like that, then months. Routine settled deeper into the walls of the house until it almost felt like I had always lived there.
Looking back now, it’s strange how convincing ordinary life can be.
Give a child his own room, regular meals, and a door that belongs to him, and he will start to believe he has found stability. Even when something beneath the surface hasn’t quite aligned yet. But at the time, I didn’t question it. Children rarely question peace when they finally find it.
It was the evening before my twelfth birthday. I didn’t expect anything. Birthdays had never meant much in places like the orphanage.
Sometimes someone remembered, most times they didn’t. The day usually passed the same way as every other day. But that evening felt slightly different. Krystyna had been more distant than usual throughout the afternoon.
The house itself felt… still. And somewhere in the back of my mind, a small part of me had begun to sense that the routine I had grown comfortable with was about to change.