Bobby directed her steely gaze toward her. “I know you don’t believe in these things, Anna, but our relationship with the dead was very different in the old world.”
“It just seems—” Anna started in, but Cassie covertly kicked her.
“You don’t have to believe me. I know what I know,” Bobby said. “And I want to apologize to you both. I was so good in burying the painful parts of my past that I buried the good memories, too. There was much more I could have shared but opening myself up to my old life hurt too much. So, I kept everything locked away and you lost out on all of it.”
“That’s not true, Mama. You passed on Ukrainian recipes. We made pysanky. You taught me how to embroider.” Anna took Bobby’s hand. “Mama, you gave me a wonderful life.”
“Thank you for saying that, Anna, but I could have done more, and I can’t change that. It’s a regret I will carry to my grave.” Bobby turned to Cassie. “Have you finished the journal?”
Cassie pulled the rushnyk, journal and pictures out of her bag and set them on the bed. “Almost, but not quite.” She could feel Nick’s eyes burning into the back of her head, but she couldn’t bear to look at him.
Bobby ran her hand down the rushnyk and touched each symbol. “My mother made this for my wedding to Pavlo, and the priest bound our hands together with it. The open wreath symbolizes our open lives ahead of us. The larks are for joy and vigor. The sunflowers are for fertility and prosperity, and the poppies are for love.”
She looked at Cassie. “Maybe this will be hard to believe, but once, long ago, like you, I loved to write. I promised Pavlo that I would write our story and tell the world what happened to us. What was done to us. I did what he asked. I wrote it here.” She pointed at the journal. “But I could never tell the world. I was too scared. I don’t just want you to know my story, Cassie. I want you to write it for me. Share my story, our story, with everyone, so what happened to us never happens again.”
Cassie shot a guilty glance toward Nick. “Oh, Bobby, I don’t know that I could do it justice. And actually, I think my mom is going to finish it up with Nick instead of me.”
“I am?” Anna said at the same time Bobby scoffed. “Bah! You are the writer in our family. It has to be you. Please, do this for me. It will be the last thing I ever ask of you.”
Way to drive that guilt home. Cassie met Nick’s eyes, and heat flooded her face. Her feelings for him were so tangled and complicated. She didn’t know how she could bear working so closely with him without hurting him or herself, but what choice did she have?
“All right, if Nick doesn’t mind helping me, I’ll do it for you.”
“I’ll do anything you need,” Nick said.
Bobby exhaled and visibly relaxed. “Thank you. I don’t think I could leave knowing I failed on that promise.”
She glanced down at the top picture on the pile and picked it up. “Oh, I always loved this one of us.”
“That’s Alina and that’s you!” Birdie pointed to each girl. “Alina looks almost the same, but you look different.”
Bobby chuckled and touched her wrinkled cheek. “Yes, I look very different, don’t I?”
32
KATYA
Ukraine, May 1933
That spring, when the earth came back to life, so did the collective, and word spread that work and food were available again. Katya supposed the state figured that anyone left alive was broken enough to do whatever they wanted, and they were right. Once, everyone had cursed the collective. Now, Kolya and Katya, with Halya on her hip, along with the other survivors, eagerly made their way to the collective farm to work every day. They planted that season’s crops, hardly able to stay on their feet as they sowed the seeds. But for each day of work, they received a bowl of watery soup and a chunk of bread. Every day, more people came with their haunted, hollow eyes and blank faces, all of them half-dead and void of emotion. They barely spoke to each other. What was there to say?
Still, people continued to die. Some in the fields, right before the food was doled out, and others after they ate, their bodies unable to process the food they so desperately needed. Somehow, some way, Katya, Kolya, and Halya survived this as well. Each meal they were given was small and weak, but it was the most food they’d had consistently in months.
To supplement that, Katya harvested flowers from the blossoming acacia trees, earthworms moving through the spring soil, tadpoles from the pond, and the dandelions sprouting in her yard, and bit by bit, their bodies began to recover.