Katya’s voice cracked. “Hush now, Mama, you just need a bit of food. I set some of the meat aside for you; let me fetch it.”
“No, Katya!” She sat up in her bed. A violent fit of coughing racked her body. When she finally stopped, she pointed her finger at Katya. “You promised me, daughter, that you would marry Kolya and give Halya a proper family before I go. It is God’s will that this is so. Why else would Vasyl appear on our door right now, of all times?”
She turned to Vasyl. “Please, marry them. It is my dying wish.” Another fit of coughing forced her back onto the pillow.
“Of course, cousin,” Vasyl replied. His eyebrows curved into question marks as he looked at Katya and Kolya. “If that is what they want.”
Katya sank onto the bed and buried her face in her hands. She didn’t want to get married, but how could she refuse her mother’s last wish? What kind of daughter would that make her?
But then, what kind of sister would it make her if she married her brother-in-law? Confusion made her head throb as Halya cried out from the bed. Katya scooped up the baby, and, slowly rocking, she walked the floor and avoided Kolya’s probing stare. Let him speak. Let him refuse Mama if he wishes, then at least it’s not on my shoulders.
Eventually, he did speak, although what he said surprised her.
“Let us get married tonight then, Katya. Neither of us have anything left in our hearts, anyway.” The bitterness and disappointment he radiated hung thick in the air. “Really, what difference does it make? It’s all for Halya, right? Everything we do is for Halya, so what is one more act?”
A lump lodged in Katya’s throat. He made sense, but the betrayal of Alina, of Pavlo, still screamed inside of her. She closed her eyes and nodded.
A few minutes later, they were standing together in front of Vasyl. Katya couldn’t tell what he said, or if Kolya spoke false words of promise and love to her. She couldn’t even say if she returned those words. Katya supposed she must have, for Vasyl wrapped a rushnyk around their hands and pronounced them married. The whole time he spoke, she could only think of Alina and how it should have been Pavlo there with her, not Kolya. She cringed as she remembered watching Alina marry Kolya right here in this same room. How her face had shone with radiance and love.
Katya couldn’t even bring herself to smile. The sick feeling in her stomach clouded her thoughts, and the event passed by in a blur. She supposed it was better that way.
25
CASSIE
Illinois, June 2004
Cassie stood in front of the mirror and, for the first time since Henry died, honestly appraised herself. Usually, she barely gave herself a glance. What was the point? She had no one to impress.
Her long brown hair hung in lanky waves around her shoulders. It desperately needed to be cut and shaped. Her pale face looked skinnier than it did in the pictures she had from before the accident, pushing her cheekbones into prominence and making her blue eyes appear huge. Clothes that used to fit hung loose on her willowy frame. She’d lost weight in the last year.
Her mom leaned into the bathroom. “I know a fabulous hairdresser. I can get you an appointment, maybe even before the date tonight. I’ll stay with Bobby and Birdie.”
“Mom! Jeez, how about some privacy?”
“Oh, come on, you didn’t even have the door closed all the way. It’s like you were crying out for help”—Anna waved her hands around her head as if she were a genie—“and poof, here I am!”
Cassie leaned closer to the mirror and pulled the skin on the side of her eyes up. “Fine, you can call, but only because my hair is getting too long, and it’s annoying me. Nick’s picking me up at seven, so I’ll need to be back well before then.”
“I’m on it!” Anna sprinted down the hall to the phone.
If her mom had her way, she’d make a manicure and pedicure appointment, too. Cassie sighed. Better to let her focus on this than the journal.
Cassie thought her mom would waver and ask for more information, but she’d stood firm on her commitment. Since then, they’d stuck to light topics, like Cassie’s lack of effort into her appearance and her big date tonight.
“How about a facial?” Anna called out two minutes later, her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. “Suzy has an opening in an hour. Maybe even a mani-pedi?”
After two hours in the salon, Cassie had to admit, she looked and felt like a new woman. She’d been polished, scrubbed, painted, trimmed, and blown out. To top it all off, when she got home, her mother magically produced three sundresses she’d happened to find on sale the day before that “didn’t fit her”。