“You can't do this, Papa. I have to see her.” Beata was crying, and his face was immovable, just as it had been when she left them. If anything, he looked harder.

“You should have thought of that nineteen years ago. If you do not leave, I will have you removed by the hospital.” She looked and felt like a madwoman as she stood there, and she could easily imagine her father having her thrown out. “We do not want you. Nor would your mother. You do not belong here.”

“She's my mother,” Beata said, convulsed with tears.

“She was your mother. You are nothing to her now.” At least Beata knew that was not true. The past two years of weekly visits had proved it, and she was so grateful they had had that, and that her mother had come to know and love her children, and they her.

“It is so wrong of you to do this, Papa. She would never forgive you for it. Nor will I.” This time she knew she wouldn't. What he was doing was too cruel.

“It was wrong of you to do what you did. I have never forgiven you,” he said without remorse.

“I love you,” Beata said softly, and then looked at the others. They had not moved or said a single word. She saw that Ulm had turned away, and Brigitte was crying softly, but held out no hand to her. And none of them tried to convince their father to let Beata see her mother. They were too afraid. “I love Mama. I have always loved you. All of you. I never stopped loving you. And Mama loves me, just as I love her,” Beata said fiercely.

“Leave now!” Her father spat the words at her, looking as though he hated her for tugging at his heart. It was impossible to fathom what he felt. “Go!” he shouted at her, pointing down the corridor from where she'd come. “You are dead to us, and always will be.” She stood looking at him for a long moment, shaking from head to foot, defying him as she had once before. She was the only one who would. She had done it the first time for Antoine, and now for her mother. But she knew there was no way he would allow her into her mother's room. She had no choice but to go, before they physically threw her out. She looked at him one last time, and then wheeled around and walked slowly down the hallway with her head down. She turned to look at them one last time before she strode around the corner, and when she did, they were all gone. They had gone into her mother's room, without her.

She was crying as she rode down in the elevator, and sobbed all the way back to her home. She called the hospital every hour through the afternoon to inquire about her mother's condition, and at four o'clock they told her. Her mother was dead. Beata sat staring into space as she set the phone down. It was over. Her last tie with her family had been severed and the mother she loved was gone. She could still hear the echo of her mother's voice the day before. “I love you, Beata.” And then she had hugged her tight. “I love you too, Mama,” Beata whispered. And she knew she always would.

10

BEATA ATTENDED HER MOTHER'S FUNERAL THE NEXT DAY, and observed it from a distance. She wore a fur coat, a good black dress, and a beautiful black hat Antoine had bought her before he died. She knew her mother would have been proud of the way she looked. And on her finger, she wore her mother's ring. She would never take it off again. Ever.

Beata sat riveted as she listened to the prayers, and prayed with them. According to Jewish tradition, Monika had to be buried within a day, and was. Beata followed them to the cemetery, and stood far away from them. They didn't even know she was there. She was like a ghost, watching them, as they each poured a shovel of dirt onto her mother's coffin after they lowered it into the ground. After they left, she went and kneeled beside the grave, and put a small pebble beside it, as a gesture of respect, according to tradition. She didn't know what she was saying, until she heard herself saying the Our Father. She knew her mother wouldn't mind. She stayed for a long time, and then she went home, feeling dead inside. As dead as her father said she was.

Amadea looked at her sadly when she got home, and put her arms around her. “I'm sorry, Mama.” She had told the girls the night before, and they had cried. In their own way, they each loved their grandmother, although they had always had conflicted feelings, particularly Amadea, about the way their grandparents had treated their mother for marrying their father. It seemed wrong to them, and Beata agreed that it was. But she loved her mother anyway. And even her father. They were her parents.

Beata went to her room early that night, and lay on her bed, thinking back to all that had happened, and her early days with Antoine. It was a lot to think about, and absorb, a lifetime that had been worthwhile, though hard. She had paid a high price for love. Losing her mother reminded her that she had no one left now but her daughters. Her father had made that clear. Her whole life was them. She had no life of her own.

It was a month later in June when Amadea took her breath away, yet again. She heard the news as one more death blow to her heart. In some ways, it was like losing her mother, except that at least Amadea would be alive.

“I am going into the convent, Mama,” Amadea said quietly, on her last day of school. Nothing had prepared Beata for the announcement her elder daughter made. She looked at her as though she had been shot, but Amadea's eyes were steady and calm. She had been waiting to announce this decision for months, and had grown more certain every day. There had been nothing hasty or frivolous about the choice she'd made.

“You're not,” Beata said, as though there was no question of it. None. To her own ears, she sounded like her father, but she was not going to let this happen. Even Antoine wouldn't have wanted that, and he was a devoted Catholic. “I won't let you do that.”

“You can't stop me.” Amadea sounded like an adult for the first time. Her voice was solid, like rock. She had agonized too much over the decision to feel any uncertainty at all now. She was absolutely certain she had a vocation, and no one could shake her faith, not even the mother she loved. This was not a pitched battle to go to university. This was a grown woman who knew what she wanted, and was going to do it. Beata was frightened at the tone of Amadea's voice, as much as by the look in her eyes.

“Your father wouldn't want that,” she reasoned, hoping to sway Amadea, by evoking her father's name. It didn't work.

“You don't know that. You gave up everything to marry him, because you believed in what you were doing. I believe in this. I have a vocation.” She said it as though speaking of the Holy Grail. In truth, she had found all she wanted and needed. After talking to her priest for months, she was sure beyond a doubt, and it was written all over her.

“Oh my God.” Beata sat down heavily and stared at her daughter. “You're too young to know that. You're bored, and you think it sounds romantic.” Beata also knew that Edith Stein had become her role model, and she had been in a convent for two years.

“You don't know what you're saying,” Amadea said calmly. “I'm going into the Carmelites. I've already talked to them. You can't stop me, Mama.” She repeated what she had said in the beginning. She didn't sound like a petulant child, but a woman with a holy purpose.

“That's a cloistered order. You will live like a prisoner for the rest of your life, shut away from the world. You're a beautiful young girl, you should have a husband and babies.”

“I want to be a nun,” she said clearly. Beata shuddered. Fortunately, Daphne was at a friend's, so she didn't hear them.

“You're doing it because Edith Stein did. She was a forty-two-year-old woman when she went in. She'd had a life. She knew what she was doing. You don't. You're too young to make this decision.”

“I'll have plenty of time to find out,” Amadea said sensibly. “It takes eight years before you take final vows.” She knew all about it. “Mama, it's the life I want.” Her eyes never left her mother's, and were filled with quiet determination, which terrified Beata.

“Why? Why?” Beata wailed, with tears running down her face. “You're beautiful and young, you have your whole life ahead of you. Why would you do that?”

“I want to serve God, and this is the best way I know how. I think this is what He wants. I want to be the bride of Christ, just the way you loved Papa. This is who I want. You're religious, Mama. You go to church. How can you not understand?” Amadea looked hurt that her mother was so unhappy about it, and something in her eyes reminded Beata of her own mother, when she told her about Antoine. Her mother had felt betrayed. And now so did Beata. It made her feel like her father, rigid and unyielding, and she didn't want to be that. But she didn't want her daughter going into the convent either. To Beata, it seemed abnormal.

“I admire you for your devotion,” Beata said quietly, “but it's a hard life. I want something better than that for you. A man to take care of you, children who love you.” And then she thought of Daphne. “What will your sister and I do without you?” She was devastated at the prospect.

“I will pray for you. That's far better than anything I could do here. I will be of much greater use praying for the world than watching the terrible things people do to destroy each other, man's terrible unkindness to their fellow man.” Amadea was deeply upset by the current injustices to the Jews, and had been since they began. It went against everything she believed, and she had strong beliefs. Beata loved her for it. But not this. Not this terrible waste of her daughter becoming a nun, locked away in a convent like a prisoner. “Will you think about it, Mama? Please? It's all I want… You can't stop me, but I want you to give me your blessing.” It was exactly what she had asked her parents for when she married Antoine. Now Amadea was asking her blessing to follow Christ. It was a terrible decision for Beata. “I love you,” Amadea said softly and put her arms around her as Beata sighed through her tears.