Katia's Promise. Catherine Lanigan

eyes, yet he studied her as if he was seeing her for the first time. “It’s been a while since you talked about your father. Do you still miss him?”

      “Every day,” she whispered, a flame igniting at the base of her esophagus and flaring up into her throat. “He—he used to call me Katia lyubov.”

      “Louie bov?”

      “Lyubov. That’s how you say it.” She nodded. “It means Katia love.”

      “He was a sentimental man, then?” Austin asked.

      “Yes. He worked hard all his life, but my mother said he had the heart of a poet. She always loved fine things, and he wanted to give them to her—that’s why he worked so hard to bring us to America. He told her he would give her the world, but—”

      “He died,” Austin finished for her. “Just like my dad.”

      “Yes. Now they’re together. Watching over us, my mother says.”

      “Do you believe her?” Austin asked solemnly.

      “I do.”

      “But how can you know? For sure, I mean. Sometimes I think that whole heaven thing is just another fairy tale.”

      “You’re just angry right now. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

      “I am angry. My dad wasn’t supposed to die. He was too young. We had great plans for after graduation. He told me we were going to go to Germany together and drive the autobahn. I wanted to see how they made German cars. I wanted to take classes over there and learn to fix all kinds of foreign cars.”

      Katia looked away from him. “Your mother was never going to allow that to happen and you know it.”

      “My dad could have talked her into it.”

      “She would never let you be a mechanic. Even I know that! She wants you to be a businessman and get a degree from Harvard.”

      “Well, it’s not what I want. Besides, I don’t see any other man of the house around here now, do you?” he asked.

      “No.”

      “See? That’s how things have changed. I’ll be making the rules now.”

      Katia chuckled at the lofty tilt to his chin and the smirk on his lips.

      She pushed her face up against his. “Don’t you ever look at me like that again, Austin McCreary, or I will never speak to you again. You are not the boss of me and never will be. You got that?”

      Austin moved back a few inches. “I just meant that things will be different.”

      “Yes. They will. But our parents still make the rules. We don’t have any power yet.”

      “Power?”

      “That’s what my mom says all the time. She must remind me twice a day that I’m only a servant’s kid. I have no power. That’s why I have to graduate high school and go to college. I think your mother is right about that, too.”

      “But I don’t want to run the family business. I want to work on antique cars.”

      “Well, I want to be a movie star.”

      “You’re pretty enough,” Austin said with a smile that Katia knew she’d remember the rest of her life.

      “Austin, I’m not sure what I actually want to be. That’s just what I want right now. I’ll probably change my mind a bunch before I’m even your age. I only know one thing.”

      “What’s that?”

      She reached into the pocket of her winter coat and pulled out the envelope that she’d hidden in her drawer for a week. “I want to give you this.” She handed it to him.

      Austin took the envelope. “What is it?”

      “Open it and see.”

      Carefully, he pulled out a folded piece of red construction paper. It opened into a heart. On it, Katia had glued bits of white lace she’d found in the attic, and she’d written snippets of Russian poems. She’d folded over pale blue pieces of construction paper and glued them to the heart, as well. Each of the folded notes contained dates.

      “What is this? July 17? And September 26? I don’t understand.”

      “Those are special days to me. On July 17, the summer I first came to live here, you taught me to ride a bike. On September 26, you finally let me play tennis with two of your friends. You said you needed another person for doubles.”

      “Yes. Last year. And we beat them,” he said.

      “Christmas is always a special day here. And so is Halloween. That’s why I put those dates down.”

      Austin looked at her then, and for the first time, Katia was aware of a boy looking at her with love in his eyes. She felt her heart thrum and warmth surged through her. She didn’t know if what she was feeling was normal or not, but it was incredibly exciting.

      “And today is February 14. Valentine’s Day,” Austin said, reaching over to touch her hand. “I don’t have a card for you. I don’t have one for anyone. I guess I didn’t think much about it.”

      “I made the card a while ago.”

      “Before my father’s heart attack.”

      “Yeah.”

      “So you didn’t give me this just to make me feel better today?”

      “No.”

      “Then, why?”

      “I want to be your friend, Austin. Your real friend. Always.”

      “I’d like that, Katia,” he’d said as he gently folded the Valentine, put it in the envelope and slipped it into the breast pocket of his tweed jacket.

      “Always...” Katia said out loud, jolting out of her reverie. Of all her memories of Austin, that Valentine’s Day was the sweetest. But what happened afterward made it painful to remember, too.

      Austin hadn’t had a single opportunity to make any rules for himself. That autumn, his mother had shipped him off to New York to attend York Prep School, where he’d remained until his graduation.

      With Austin away at school, Katia felt as if she’d been set adrift on an iceberg in the middle of the Black Sea. Katia didn’t know whom to blame. At times she felt as if she’d done something wrong, but her love for Austin wouldn’t allow her to hide in shame. Other times, she was angry that Hanna would think so ill of her that she couldn’t trust Katia and Austin to be alone. Through it all, she was lonely without Austin and she missed him more than she’d thought possible. By the time she was sixteen, they’d truly fallen in love, and the days without him were torturously long and empty. Nothing she did could fill the void. She counted the days until he came home for holidays. She wrote long letters to him and mailed them without Stephania’s or Hanna’s knowledge.

      Though he never wrote back, he called her every Sunday night just after his weekly call to his mother. Katia waited in her bedroom and told her mother that one of her girlfriends was on the phone. Austin had to stand in line for a pay phone in his dorm, with other boys hanging over his shoulder, and the calls were often strained and awkward. Too often, Katia hung up in tears.

      When Austin did come home for vacations, Katia made a fool of herself by hanging on to him, begging for kisses and promising to do everything and anything he asked. Then he would leave again for school and the torture would start all over.

      Katia was so caught up in her obsession with Austin that she didn’t realize her wise and sharp-eyed mother had seen and heard everything.

      Stephania was convinced Katia would get pregnant on Austin’s next school break. There was barely enough income to contribute to Katia’s upcoming schooling as it was. The cost of a third mouth to feed—not