‘Don’t fuck with me.’

‘You talk tough, you act tough – but you are also still an adolescent when it comes to letting your emotions run you; of not being able to count to ten.’

Long silence. Amber stood up from the television and – sensing something was up – came over and asked us what was going on. She was especially wide-eyed to see the gun in Elise’s hand. Elise explained all. Amber immediately put her arms around Klara – who stiffened at her embrace. She began to speak with her, offering condolences, telling her:

‘You must get to your mother now.’

Klara started to pace back and forth, as I had often seen her doing when indecisive, overstressed. Then:

‘I’ll only go if you give me back my gun.’

‘It stays here,’ Elise said.

‘Says who?’

‘I’m insisting on this – because you don’t need it where you’re going. And you shouldn’t be visiting your dying mother carrying a concealed weapon. Would you agree with me, Brendan?’

I nodded.

‘Then I’m not going,’ Klara said.

Amber suddenly turned on Klara, saying that Elise was right; that she had to go now and see her; that Elise was a woman ‘we could all trust’ and ‘we will be safe here until tomorrow’.

‘I lost my mama when I was thirteen. As bad as she was I don’t think I’d have ended up in this terrible place had she lived. Your mama might be an angry woman, and against all you’re about, but I know that she still probably loved you more than anything.’

This battered, violated child was so forceful, so outraged in her tone, that even my daughter was taken aback. When she finished she put her hand on Klara’s shoulder. This time Klara lowered her head, her eyes filling up.

‘She never liked me,’ she said.

‘Amber’s right,’ I said. ‘She loved you. But she couldn’t handle anyone or anything outside her limited way of looking at the world. And she was also easily influenced by people more persuasive than she was.’

I was already using the past tense to speak about Agnieska. An hour later – as we headed west on the interstate – Klara turned to me and said:

‘I never told you this – but when I was six, I came home from first grade and spilt a glass of milk at the kitchen table. Momma got furious, started slapping me around, telling me how it was my brother Karol who should have lived, not me. Saying that, though she loved me, she never liked me. And she doubted she ever would.’

‘She was still crazy with grief then.’

‘You trying to excuse what she said, Poppa?’

‘I’m just saying … she was in a hellhole ….’