As I stood at the door, she called me back.
“One more thing, Mrs. Krawczyk.”
I turned.
“The letter you mentioned. Did your father-in-law say why you should wait before confronting his sons?”
“He wrote that I should speak to you first.”
She looked down at the folder.
“Then I think we should find out why he was so concerned about the timing.”
The Photograph That Changed the Story
That evening, Paweł and I sat together in our kitchen.He read his father’s message in silence. By the time he reached the final paragraph, his eyes were wet.
“Why didn’t he tell us?” he whispered.
“Maybe he was afraid of causing an argument.”
Paweł shook his head.
“Dad was never afraid of an argument.”
“No,” I said. “But perhaps he was afraid of what would happen after it.”
We went through the photographs from the iron box.
There was one of Stanisław standing beside a small white cottage, younger by decades, with an apple tree behind him. Another showed him beside a woman I did not recognize.
