“You can’t see anything out there, can you?”
“Mom wants to tell more of the story. ”
“Tonight?” Nina jumped up, letting the wet towel slump to the floor, and hurried to the other side of the room.
Meredith picked up the damp towel and carried it to the bathroom, where she hung it back up.
“You ready?” Nina said from the doorway.
Meredith turned to look at her sister. “You have wings. ”
“Huh?”
“Maybe I’m like some ostrich or dodo bird. I stayed on the ground so long, I lost the ability to fly. ”
Laughing, Nina put an arm around Meredith and led her out of the stateroom. “You’re not some damned ostrich, which, by the way, are mean assed birds who always stand alone. ”
“So what am I?” Meredith asked as Nina knocked on Mom’s door.
“Maybe you’re a swan. They mate for life, you know. I don’t know if one can fly without the other. ”
“That’s strange, coming from you. You’re no romantic. ”
“Yeah,” Nina said, looking at her. “But you are. ”
Meredith was surprised by that. She would never have called herself a romantic. That was for people like her father who loved everyone unconditionally and never failed at the grand gesture. Or like Jeff, who never forgot to kiss her good night, no matter how late it was or how hard his day had been.
Or maybe it was for girls who found their soul mates when they were young and didn’t quite understand how rare that was.
The door opened. Mom stood there waiting, her white hair unbound and her body wrapped in an oversized blue cruise ship robe. The color was so incongruous on Mom that Meredith did a double-take.
And then it struck her. “Vera sees color,” she said.
Beside her, Nina gasped. “That’s right. So you see in color. ”
“No,” Mom said.
“How come—”
“No questions,” Mom said firmly. “These were the rules. ” She walked over to her bed and climbed in, leaning back into a pile of pillows.
Meredith followed Nina into the room and took a seat beside her sister on the love seat. In the silence, she heard waves slapping the side of the boat, and the quiet intake of their combined breathing.
“Vera cannot believe that she must leave her children again,” Mom said softly, using her voice to its fullest power. She no longer looked delicate and old. In fact, she was almost smiling and her eyes had drifted shut.
“Especially when she worked so hard to bring them home, but Leningrad is a city of women now, and they must defend against the Germans, and so, on a bright and sunny day, Vera kisses
her babies good-bye for the second time in a week. They are four and five, too young to be left without their mother, but war changes everything, and just as her mother had predicted, Vera is doing what would have been unimaginable even a few months ago. In their small apartment, with all eyes on her, Vera kneels down in front of them. “Aunt Olga and Mama have to go help keep Leningrad safe. You need to be very strong and grown-up while we are gone, yes? Baba will need your help. ”
Leo’s eyes immediately fill with tears. “I don’t want you to go. ”
Vera cannot look in her son’s sad eyes, so she turns slightly toward her daughter, whom already she had begun to think of as the strong one.
“What if you don’t come back?” Anya says quietly, trying her best not to cry.
Vera reaches into her pocket for the treasure she had thought to take with her. She pulls it out slowly. In her palm sits the beautiful jeweled butterfly. “Here,” she says to Anya. “I want you to hold this for Mama. It is my most special thing. When you look at it, you’ll think of me and know that I will come back to you and that wherever I am, I am thinking of you and Leo, and loving you both. Don’t play with it, or break it. This is who we are, Anya. It proves that I will come back to you. Okay?”
Very solemnly, Anya takes the butterfly, holds it carefully in her small palm.