The Other Girl by Pam Jenoff Page B

were like livestock or other belongings one simply had. It was his indifference to the idea that had stopped her from sharing the news with him. He would know, she had decided, when he came back. He had to come back. It was not a particular emotional attachment to him. Rather, she could not imagine what her life might look like if he never returned.
    That she was pregnant was not surprising. Piotr had come at her nightly without fail. Sometimes in the pale gray of early morning she had found him lifting her nightgown a second time or even awakened groggily with him already inside her, his movements building to a rough, repetitive thump that had made her cringe and hope that his parents would not hear. It had not been his desire for her, she suspected; sex had been a new toy to him and he simply could not get enough of it. Maria had found it mildly interesting—perhaps she might even like it one day if he would slow down.
    Was it supposed to be more? Maria’s mind reeled back to a day many years ago when she had accompanied her father on an errand to Krakow. As they’d passed through a busy commercial neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, she had glimpsed an older boy with dark eyes leaning out a second-story window. Their eyes had locked and he had taken her in with a long soulful look that had seemed to pull at her insides beyond anything her twelve-year-old mind could comprehend. With Piotr, she had felt nothing like that tug.
    Her mother had sensed her uneasiness the night before the wedding. “Love grows,” she’d offered unbidden as Maria had packed for her new home. But with whom? she had wanted to ask, thinking of the stack of letters she had found years earlier buried deep in her mother’s cedar chest. They had been written in a flowing script that was not her father’s and they had spoken words of love to her mother, painting a picture of a vibrant and adored woman Maria did not quite know. The letters, signed only with the initial “J,” had seemed surreal. Maria had gone back a second time weeks later to reread them and try to understand. But when she’d looked in the chest, they were gone.
    She wished that she had asked Mama about them before leaving. Her eyes traveled across the village, which sloped at a crooked angle below. She glimpsed her childhood home on the far edge, the familiar yellow light burning behind the curtains in the window. It was smaller than the Adamczyk house, but it had been cozy, with something delicious usually cooking in the oven and Papa’s violin music enlivening the long winter nights. A wave of yearning washed over her. Despite the sadness that had seemed to swallow her mother over the years, Maria had been happy at home. She had not wanted to accept Piotr’s proposal or leave at all.
    But that had all changed a few months earlier, before the wedding. One evening when she had been out tending to the livestock, Maria had noticed something odd at their neighbors’ house: the front door was ajar and no lights were on, even though the sun had set. “Something must be wrong at the Bukowskis,” she had told her father breathlessly when she had gone back inside.
    â€œOh?”
    Maria had described to him what she had seen. An unusual expression had appeared on her father’s face and she’d wondered if it had been a mistake to say anything.
    The next morning, she had awakened to a clatter and run to the window. Police were at the Bukowskis’ house. She had heard glass shattering inside, then a piece of a chair had sailed through a broken window. Maria had begun dressing to go find her father. As she’d reached the top button of her blouse, her hand had frozen in midair. She’d suddenly recalled a day weeks earlier when she had been passing through the village and had seen her father talking to a policeman in an alleyway, heads close.
    Alarmed, she had hurried to him. “Papa, is something