Chapter 7

Knezha, Bulgaria

The road back to the house felt longer than Natasha remembered.

She and Stefan walked quietly through the narrow village streets, the cold morning air brushing against their faces. Frost still clung to the grass along the edges of the road, and the sky above Knezha had the pale gray color that came before the sun fully rose.

Neither of them spoke.

The house appeared slowly at the end of the path, just as it always had—small, leaning slightly to one side, the roof patched unevenly with old sheets of metal that rattled whenever the wind grew strong. The apple tree in the yard stood bare, its thin branches stretching toward the sky like tired fingers.

Natasha stopped for a moment before opening the gate.

This had been home.

She pushed the gate open. It creaked loudly in the morning quiet.

Inside, the house felt colder than the air outside. The moment Natasha stepped through the door she could feel the stillness of it, the kind of silence that gathers in places where no one has been living properly for some time.

The kitchen looked exactly the same as the morning she had left.

The table.The cracked ceiling above it.The stove in the corner, dark and empty.

Nothing had moved.

Stefan walked past her slowly, looking around the room as if he were visiting a place he only half remembered. His eyes lingered on the floor, on the walls, on the small window above the sink.

Natasha forced herself to begin.

They did not have much to pack.

A few old clothes folded into a worn cloth bag. Two blankets that still smelled faintly of wood smoke. Some small kitchen things that might still be useful.

She moved through the house carefully, touching objects that had once seemed ordinary but now carried strange weight in her hands. A chipped bowl. A wooden spoon her mother had used every day. A small icon of the Virgin Mary that had hung near the doorway for as long as Natasha could remember.

She wrapped the icon gently in cloth before placing it into the bag.

Stefan helped quietly, bringing things to her without being asked.

In the bedroom there was even less.

A small dresser. A narrow bed. A wooden box beneath the window.

Natasha knelt beside the box and opened it slowly.

Inside were the things her mother had kept safe over the years—papers, a few letters, and several old photographs with the edges curled from age.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she lifted one of them.

It was the picture she had been looking for.

Black and white, the paper slightly faded.

Her mother and father stood side by side in front of the house.

They were young.

Her father stood tall, his shoulders straight, his smile easy and confident. Her mother leaned slightly toward him, her eyes bright, her hair loose around her shoulders. Behind them the house looked almost cheerful, the garden tidy, the roof still whole.

They looked happy.

So certain about the life waiting ahead of them.

Natasha held the photograph tightly.

For a moment the room seemed to grow very quiet.

And suddenly her thoughts carried her back to another cold morning.

The funeral.

She could see it as clearly as if it were happening again.

The small church had been filled with the dull gray light of winter, candles burning quietly around the coffin. Her mother lay inside it, dressed in her best dark clothes.

She had looked almost alive.

Just pale.

Too pale.

The headscarf had been wrapped carefully around her head, covering the back where the terrible wound had been. Natasha knew it was there, even though she could not see it- the place where the skull had fractured when her mother struck the frozen ground.

Her hands rested peacefully across her torso, folded together as if she were simply sleeping.

But Natasha knew she was not.

Only a few people had come.

A couple of neighbors. Two older women from the church.

Father Georgi stood near the coffin; his shoulders slightly bent with exhaustion. His voice had sounded rough during the prayers, as if the words themselves were heavy in his throat.

Outside the wind had been bitter.

The cemetery looked colorless beneath the gray sky. The earth had been hard and cold where the grave had been dug. Natasha remembered staring down at the dark hole in the ground and thinking how small it seemed for something so final.

Stefan had stood beside her the entire time.

He had not spoken.

He had not made a sound.

But when the men from the cemetery began lowering the coffin into the grave, he reached out and placed one small hand against the wood.

Tears slid silently down his face.

That had been the only moment he had touched her.

One of the neighbors had brought flowers from her indoor garden. Bright ones—reds and yellows that looked almost too alive against the gray sky and the dark coats of the people gathered there.

They seemed strangely out of place.

Too warm.

Too colorful.

As if they belonged to another season.

Natasha remembered a black cat sitting near the far edge of the cemetery, watching everything from a distance. It had remained perfectly still the entire time, its yellow eyes bright against the dull winter grass.

She had noticed it again just as the ropes lowered the coffin completely into the ground.

The sound of the wood settling against the earth had echoed softly in the quiet air.

And just like that, her mother was gone.

Not only in spirit.

But in the world itself.

The grave had been filled slowly with cold dirt until the coffin disappeared from sight.

Natasha blinked.

The bedroom returned around her.

The photograph was still in her hands.

Stefan stood quietly in the doorway watching her.

She wiped her eyes quickly and slipped the picture into the cloth bag with the rest of their belongings.

“Ready?” she asked softly.

Stefan nodded.

Natasha took one last look around the small room.

The walls. The window. The empty bed.

Then she closed the wooden box and stood.

Together they stepped out of the house and closed the door behind them.

The wind moved gently through the apple tree branches as they walked away.

Natasha did not look back.