Half Life by Jillian Cantor (easy to read books for adults list txt) 📕

the remainder of the rubles into hiding in the bottom drawer of my chest, promising myself I would use to it to grow and build my university, somehow. It was what Papa would’ve wanted, what Papa would’ve been most proud of. And I would not disappoint him. I would continue to teach and help other women learn. I would continue to learn myself.

THE NEW YEAR DAWNED, AND IN THE SPRING, BRONIA SENT A letter telling me it was official: she would be a resident of Poland again by the end of summer. Construction on their sanatorium in Zakopane had begun, and it would be completed by August. Soon they would be only a six-hour train ride away from me.

This was followed in quick succession by a letter from Hela—she was engaged to Jacques! She wanted to hold the wedding in Paris before Bronia moved away, but only if Kaz and I were able to make it there. Were we?

“Are we?” I asked Kaz, showing him the letter, later that evening.

We were in a different place, a new apartment, and in the past few months we had reconnected. We had a newfound pleasure in being together again, exploring each other’s bodies at night in bed. I felt a way I had not in years, not since the beginning days of our marriage.

“We have to go to your sister’s wedding,” Kaz said, frowning a little. I could practically see the thoughts going through his head by the long crease in his forehead. It would take days to get to Paris, days to get back, not to mention the time we would spend there for the wedding. And what would Hipolit do without him in that time? How would his research suffer?

“I could go on my own,” I told him. “I wouldn’t mind.” The truth was I would mind a little. But I also understood how important his work was to him.

“Let me see if I can figure it out,” Kaz said, rubbing his chin with his fingers. “Can you wait a few days to write Hela back?”

I nodded, and leaned across the table to kiss him. He kissed me back, deeper, harder. I put Hela’s letter down, put my sisters out of my mind. Here on Złota Street, in Loksow, it was just me and Kaz. And that felt exactly perfect.

“MARYA,” LEOKADIA CALLED OUT TO ME ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON. She’d been teaching a piano class to three young women interested in music who I’d found at the girls’ gymnasium in town after befriending the headmistress, a woman my age who desired more for her students. I’d attended Leokadia’s class today simply to watch, as it was my first experiment in pulling girls as young as fourteen into our university. Their talent was astounding—even with a few years of my own lessons from Leokadia, I could still barely play a simple song—and Leokadia’s teaching was wonderful. She was kind and patient, and she handed all three of them more challenging pieces to practice, saying she would want to see them again next week. The girls left, their faces glowing, and Leokadia called out to me, asking me to stay.

“I’ve missed you,” she said now, with a smile and then a hug. The truth was I’d kept my distance from her since returning from Warsaw. We were busy moving, and then I’d been focusing all my time on figuring out how to build my school and being happy with Kaz again. And now writing to Bronia about her move and Hela about her wedding. But if I were being honest with myself, there was something else, something gnawing at the edges of me, something I’d been pushing back, trying to ignore. That thing she’d said to me in Warsaw as her fingers had moved so deftly with the knitting needles: how lucky I was, to have two men who adored and respected me.

“I’ve missed you too,” I said, hugging her back. With my arms around her, I noticed she’d lost a little weight, and when I pulled back, examined her more closely, the bones of her face looked more angular, making her expression seem slightly severe; her cheeks were paler than they used to be, too. But it was cold outside still, perhaps it was the lack of sunshine from the winter months. “Can you stay for supper?” she asked me.

“I shouldn’t,” I said. “I need to get home, prepare something for Kaz.”

“No, no.” She waved me away with a flick of her wrist, her fingers running easily through the air like they were playing imaginary piano keys. “Kaz is back in Papa’s study. I’ll go fetch him. You should both stay. How lucky I would be to have the two of you to myself for an entire evening.” There it was again, that word: lucky.

And finally I nodded, unable to think of another reason to refuse her.

LEOKADIA’S MOTHER WAS AWAY IN WARSAW, VISITING HER sister, and Hipolit was too ill to dine at the table. Leokadia brought him a tray, prepared by their live-in housekeeper, so it was only the three of us at their long, rectangular dining table, certainly built to entertain a party of twenty or more. The three of us sat at one end, Leokadia at the head of the table, Kaz and I across from each other, both staring uneasily into our bowls of beautifully prepared beetroot soup.

Leokadia chattered on about a concert she had played the weekend before, about a man who had told her she played better than any woman he’d ever heard. “He managed to be both flattering and demeaning. You know how that is, Marya.”

I nodded into my soup, and then I looked up at the same time as Kaz. Our eyes met across the table, and something flashed across his face: guilt, or remorse, or sadness, and then I knew. I just knew.

“DO YOU LOVE HER?” I ASKED HIM LATER, AS WE WALKED BACK to our apartment together. We were not holding hands; we