Winter Garden

by Kristin Hannah

How ironic it was that eyes of such remarkable hue were unable to see color. Meredith

Sometimes a thing was its truest self when the colors were stripped away.

and the images of this place would bleach out like bones beneath a punishing sun, until, in no time at all, they’d be too pale to see at all.

It occurred to her, as she breathed in the salty air, how lucky she was in this life, even with her grief.

“It’s what I love best about you,” he said, kissing the grimy palm of her hand.

“I don’t know how. He was . . . my sun, I guess.” “I love you like that,” he said quietly.

She wanted that to be enough, prayed for it to be enough, but it wasn’t, and she felt her own sense of failure blossom, take over, until all she could do was try to stop loving her mother.

ground beneath her felt unreliable. She’d thought his love was a bulkhead that could hold back any storm, but like everything else in her life, his love was conditional. All at once she was that ten-year-old girl again, being dragged out of the garden, wondering how she’d gone so wrong.

It hurt so much she couldn’t stand it, as he must have known it would.

“My favorite author is Pushkin. Although Anna Akhmatova reads my mind. I miss . . . the true belye nochi, and my favorite movie is Doctor Zhivago.” Her accent softened on the Russian words, turned them into a kind of music.

with

They must keep their heads down and their hands working, for the shadow of the Black Knight falls with the swiftness of a steel blade.

There is a feeling in your heart when you meet the boy you’ll love. It’s like . . . drowning and then coming up for air.”

not want to smell like bread all day.” She feels her mother’s nod. They are connected like that now, the three of them. When one moves, they all feel it. Ripples in a pond.

seems so impossible.” “Dreams are for men like your father. They are the reason we mourn him now, in private and secretly, as if we are criminals. He

“He loved you two more than his words, more than his own breath. That will never die.”

value; it was like finding out that the painting above your fireplace was an early Van Gogh.

“You hang on,” her mother said. “Until your hands are bleeding, and still you do not let go.”

And when he took her in his arms and made love to her again, she learned something new, something she hadn’t known before: sex could mean many things; one of them was good-bye.

Every choice changed the road you were on and it was too easy to end up going in the wrong direction.

of them spend their days in dark, quiet rooms, crating up masterpieces

She will remember how she told them what she hadn’t known before: that war is about fire and fear and bodies lying in ditches by the side of the road.

She doesn’t know how it is possible to believe simultaneously that her situation will improve and that she will die, but there it is.

It is the best day of Vera’s life—as impossible as that sounds. The memory of it is golden, and as she walks home, holding his hand, she can feel herself protecting it. It is a light she will need in the months to come

“To those who are here, those who are gone, and those who are lost.” She clinked her glass against Mom’s.

You couldn’t control the direction of your family any more than you could stop the continental shelf from breaking apart. All you could do was hold on for the ride.

“You know what, Mom? I’d be proud to have your strength. What you’ve been through—and we don’t know the worst of it, I think—it would have killed an ordinary woman. Only someone extraordinary could have survived. So, yeah, I do want to end up like you.”

It was a sound she’d keep forever, and pull out whenever she stopped believing in miracles.

sit next to my dead mother for a long time, in our shadowy, cold room, with my head bowed in a prayer that comes too late. Then I remember a thing she said to me long ago, when I was the child who needed comfort. We will not speak of him again. At the time, I thought it was because of his danger to us, his crimes, but as I sit next to my mother, I feel her move beside me—I swear I do—she reaches over and touches my hand and I feel warm for the first time in months, and I understand what she was saying to me then. Go on. Forget if you can. Live.

It is true what they say. Children become adults who become children again.

There are streetlamps on at the cemetery, although I wish it were dark.

know my own body by its bones now. Still, I smile when I kiss my babies awake.

“You won’t, moya dusha. We’ll make sure of it.” My soul. She is that. They both are. And because of that, I get up and get dressed and go to work.

I can’t recall the past, but I can see the future: it is in the stretched, tiny faces of my children, in the blue boils that have begun to blister Leo’s pale skin.

We look at each other again, both knowing it is not enough. “He is Leo.” “My son was Yuri.” I nod in understanding. Sometimes a name is all you have left.

Inside are evacuation papers. We are to leave on the twentieth. Beneath the papers is a coil of fresh sausage and a bag of nuts.

“Never take your scarf off again. Do not give it to anyone. Not even me.” “But I love you, Mama.” And there is my strength. Gritting my teeth against the pain that will come, I stagger to my feet and start moving again.

How can I call her my soul and then push her away? But I do. I do. At the last minute, I hand her the butterfly. “Here. You hold this for me. I will come back for it. For you.”

Live, he’d said, and I’d agreed.

So with empty arms and a heart turned to stone, I leave my son there, all by himself, lying dead in a cot by the door, and once again I start to walk. I know that all I will ever have of my son now is a date on the calendar and the stuffed rabbit that is in my suitcase.

I

Her mother was a lioness. A warrior. A woman who’d chosen a life of hell for herself because she wanted to give up and didn’t know how.

She’d been hiding behind the camera, looking through glass, trying to find herself. But how could she? How could any woman know her own story until she knew her mother’s?

You do not let people look away from that which hurts. I am so, so proud of what you do. You saved us.” “You

there was one thing she’d learned in all of this, it was that life—and love—can be gone any second. When you had it, you needed to hang on with all your strength and savor every second.

And maybe that was how it was supposed to be, how life unfolded when you lived it long enough. Joy and sadness were part of the package; the trick, perhaps, was to let yourself feel all of it, but to hold on to the joy just a little more tightly because you never knew when a strong heart could just give out.