Chapter 6: The Door Is Open

My father had brought a casserole from the church ladies.

He set it on the table, took off his coat, and kissed his own fingers and then my forehead.

"Sarma," he said.

"Mrs. Obradovic made it herself.

"She said a bride should not cook in the first week."

He smiled around the room.

He was a handsome man, still, heavy and warm, with silver hair and a gold cross.

Everyone in the parish loved him.

He was the man who paid for the church roof.

"Xander," he said, and held out his hand.

Xander shook it.

I watched his face while he did, and saw nothing.

"Dragan," Xander said.

"You are welcome in this house."

"Of course," my father said.

"We are family."

"We are," said Xander.

"Baba Stana," my father said, bending to the old woman.

"You look wonderful."

She regarded him with her hearing aids turned off.

I knew it, because her eyes were on his mouth and not on his face.

"And you, my love," he said, turning to me, "are you happy?"

"Yes," I said.

"I'm fine."

"You're thin," he said.

"You were always thin when you were upset."

"I'm not upset," I said.

"No," he said, tenderly.

"Of course not.

"You've married well."

He sat down.

He ate a bowl of Baba's oatmeal and told a story about the church roof.

He did not mention Tomasz.

He had not said Tomasz's name once in nineteen days, not at the wedding, not at the dinner, not on the phone.

I understood that now.

I had not noticed it before, because I had not known what to listen for.

In thirty years Tomasz Wierzba had been in every sentence my father ever said about his own life, and the sentence had stopped.