Grandfather Neumann turned those gentle, sometimes stern eyes on her. “In due time, Kat. Right now, I need to rest my weary bones. I am nearly eighty years old, you know.”
Kat nodded, disappointment rising up in the form of tears. “Can I just ask you one question?”
Grandfather sighed, but he nodded, his strong hands coming to rest on her shoulders.
“You said you came back to Russia once. Why?”
He pursed his lips, and stared at her a long time. Sorrow rose in his eyes, alive and flickering, as if he were reliving fresh grief. “I suppose I was on the same quest you are.”
Kat opened her mouth, but no words emerged. Grandfather had come looking for Magda’s ancestors? Questions knotted her brain and she frowned at him, furious, suddenly that he’d kept so much of her past locked away. Thirty years seemed an eternity to wait for answers. She stepped away from him. “I found her father’s journal, but I never found anything about her, Grandfather. I hope you can help me.”
Grandfather Neumann nodded and pulled her to his chest. “In time, Kat. In time.” She hung on tight, eyes closed, feeling suddenly like the eight-year-old who had see a broken stranger in a hospital bed, and wondered who he was beneath the bandaged exterior.
Grandfather finally released her, sat on the bed, and patted it for her to join him. “Now I have a question.” He searched her face, those green eyes as piercing as she’d remembered them. “Do you love this man?”
Kat sat down and leaned into her grandfather’s shoulder, the only grandfather she’d even known, her true grandfather, woven into her heart. “Yes. He’s the one I’ve been waiting for all my life.”
She had unearthed so few answers in Russia. But, wrapped in Vadeem’s arms, the strong masculine redolence of strength and safety rushing through her on a wave of delight, the touch of his whiskered cheek on her face, she knew she’d found a different answer. Perhaps God’s special answer for her. Six-feet-two-inches of answer, with curly dark hair that begged a woman to muss it, muscled arms that held her without hesitation, and a heart that was just beginning to learn what it meant to walk with God.
She couldn’t wait to stick around to see that happen. Yes, Vadeem Spasonov was an answer she’d journeyed to Russia to find.
Grandfather tucked his arm around her with a strength that never diminished, regardless of his age. “True love is a rare find, Kat. Hang on tight and never let go.”
She wondered at the tremor in his voice.
“Now, go downstairs and keep your young man company. He’s tied up in knots.” Grandfather gave a wry chuckle. “Tell him not to be so nervous. I like him. He reminds me of a dear Russian friend I had once named Pavel.”
Kat popped her grandfather a kiss before she left the room.
Vadeem was in knots. Pacing a figure-eight on the floor. Kat laughed at his mussed hair, the worry in his eyes. “Vadeem, calm down, he likes you.”
Vadeem smiled wryly. “Well, I hope so, but I’m not the only one who’s worried about meeting him.”
Kat frowned.
Vadeem gestured with his head toward the lobby seating. Pyotr stood and smiled, lopsided, not at all looking like the rugged man who had saved Vadeem’s life, but the gentle pastor who had tended his soul. Kat walked over to him, and then noticed his mother, sitting tall with a bright blue-eyed gaze on Kat.
Kat slowed her pace, confused.
“My mother has something to tell you, Kat. . .and I hope she’s telling the truth.” Pyotr’s eyes apologized again, and Kat traveled back to their conversation. Obviously, he’d taken the woman’s wild ramblings seriously enough to drag her onto a plane to Moscow.
“Hello, Baba Rina.” Kat reached out gently, like she might do to a frightened child. Rina startled her by climbing to her feet, and holding her hand in an iron grip. Fire blazed in those blue eyes, so strong Kat felt it to her toes.
“The name is Marina Antonova Klassen Shubina Dobrana.”
Kat froze, her heart thumping like a hammer against her rib cage. Grandmother?
“I came to thank you, Child. You have done it, Kat. You have fulfilled the promise. Anton’s promise.”
Kat frowned at the old woman. How much had Pyotr told her?
“My father, Anton, made a promise, and you, through your bravery have kept that promise to bring the crest safely home.”
Kat scraped up gentle words for this woman speaking in riddles. “I don’t understand. You’re Marina Klassen? I thought she died. How do you know me? How do you know my family?”
She smiled, and for the first time, Kat noticed her blue eyes, deep and twinkling. Eyes that stared back at her, in delight. Eyes she recognized as her own.
“Give me the picture, child.”
The ancient picture. Kat felt Vadeem sidle up beside her as she fumbled for her Bible, safely rescued from the glove compartment of Ryslan’s car. She retrieved the picture, and just to make sure her ears weren’t playing a horrible joke, she checked the name on the back. Klassen. Her hands trembled as she handed the photograph to the babushka. Her babushka.
Marina took it, and suddenly years dissolved from her face. She smiled, and recognition, even longing, filled her expression. “I’ve missed my picture. When you showed it to me at the house. . .well, it was if my past had reached out and grabbed me.” Her voice fell. “I simply couldn’t believe my eyes.”
Kat’s pulse roared in her ears. Her voice betrayed her as a thousand questions knotted her mind. As if in understanding, Marina reached out, and touched Kat’s arm. The soft grip sent waves of warmth through Kat. “I suppose you read the verse on the back?”
Kat managed to nod.
“You see, God kept His promise, too. His faithfulness continues to all generations.”
Kat froze as the woman touched Kat’s face, her hair, examining it as a mother might a newborn child. Thankfully, Vadeem’s arm, warm and steady, curled around Kat’s waist and held her up on her trembling legs.
“Sixty years ago I met a man with whom I fell in love. He helped save our Motherland, but together we committed a terrible crime. His name was Edward. And he called me by a Hebrew name that means strength.”
Kat caught her breath, seeing the truth, the hope, the joy resonating in the woman’s expression as she smiled and said, “He called me—
“Magda.”
The name came out in a strained puff of shock, the voice constricted by disbelief, and perhaps pain. Kat turned, and saw time melt away on her Grandfather’s face. His voice warbled as his emotions caught up with it. “I thought. . . They told me. . .” His Russian struggled against years of disuse, and Kat ached to fill in the gap for him. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple a ball of frustration bobbing down in his throat. Then those green eyes that had churned with unspoken sadness for so many years ignited, and blazed. “But I knew. I always knew.”
Kat took a step toward him, suddenly fearful of the passion building in his voice. Vadeem’s grip around her waist tightened.
“I came back once, and searched for you. . .” Grandfather’s face twisted, and he seemed to be fighting a wave of memory. “I’m sorry I left you behind.”
The voice of the woman behind Kat came out thick with emotion. “You had to, Edick. It was God’s will. And because of your courage, you saved our family.” Magda moved past Kat and reached out her wrinkled hand.
Grandfather clasped it, his face shining, tracing hers with a gaze that spoke of pure devotion, pure love. It pulled at Kat’s heart, and tears laced her eyes.
What had happened that had forced Grandfather to abandon the woman he so obviously loved in Russia? And what will of God had Grandfather summoned the courage to fulfill?
How had Kat, and her mother, ended up in America? And who was her mother’s biological father?
The questions—and answers—would have to come later, when joy wasn’t gluing the words to her chest, when her heart wasn’t swelling to three times its size watching her grandfather draw the frail woman, Pyotr’s mother
—her grandmother!--into his arms and hold her like a soldier returning home from battle.
Magda’s voice emerged, buoyant and betraying the fear, the confidence, the inner war she’d waged for over half a century. “I hoped, from the day you left, that you’d return. And you took care of my hope, just as I knew you would. The day you carried me from the flames, I knew God had a plan for you. I just needed to trust him.”
Grandfather kissed the top of her head, gently, like a man might his beloved bride, then looked at Kat. His eyes brimmed with an unfamiliar radiance. “God has answered so many promises,” he said in English. He tracked his gaze to Vadeem, and smiled. His tone turned fatherly, and this time, his Russian came out perfectly and said all Kat could have hoped. “I think His blessings are just getting started.”
A wave of warmth started in Kat’s toes and crested through her until tears streamed down her cheeks. She looked at Vadeem, who met her gaze.
“Oh yes,” Vadeem said in a whisper that sent a ripple down her spine. “His blessings are just getting started.”
Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD , have never forsaken those who seek you. The words of David’s psalm filled Kat’s mind like a whisper. “Praise the Lord,” Kat said softly. She glanced at Pyotr, who had braced his arm against the sofa, his face a few shades lighter than it had been. “So that makes you. . .my uncle?”
He might have nodded, but the answer came in the tilted smile and the light twinkling in his eyes. “I knew I liked you. I should have recognized that Klassen spunk.”
Kat looked away, feeling a blush crawl up her face, but Vadeem hooked his finger under her chin. “She’s got spunk all right. She’s my Katoosha. My explosion of delight. . .Maya Doragaya.”
Then he kissed her, right in front of her grandfather, the kind of kiss that hinted of so many of those blessings he’d mentioned.
But when he released her, Kat noticed that her grandfather wasn’t paying any attention. He had his face buried in Magda’s hair, his shoulder’s shaking, sobbing as he peeled back time and pain to embrace the joy they’d all come to Russia to find.
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Ekaterina (Heirs of Anton) Page 24
