I wished so much that we could be married before he left for medical school so that I could go with him to the city. Mostly I couldn’t bear the thought of us parting, but a part of that desperation was rooted in my impatience to leave the family farm. My home was just past the outskirts of the rural township of Trzebinia, where Tomasz’s father Aleksy was the doctor, and his mother Julita had been a schoolteacher until she died in childbirth with his little sister. I was certain my life lay beyond the small world we inhabited, but there was no way to escape without marriage, and I was still a little too young for that—only fifteen at the time. The best I could hope for was that one day, Tomasz would come back for me.

The weekend arrived before Tomasz was due to leave, late in the spring of 1938. Time has a way of diluting how we remember things, but there are some memories too pure for even the ravages of the years, and that Sunday is as fresh in my mind as it was when I woke the next morning. Perhaps it’s just a side effect of holding the memory so close to myself over the years, replaying it in my mind over and over again as if it was my favorite film. Even now when I struggle to remember where I am sometimes or what day it is, I’m certain I still remember everything from that day—every moment, every touch, every scent and every sound. All day, heavy gray clouds had lingered low in the sky. We’d had so much rain in the days before that my boots were coated, and I wasn’t sure how much was from the animals and how much was from the mud. For days, the weather had been dreary, but by that Sunday evening, a cruel wind had blown in that made it bitter.

My brothers Filipe and Stanislaw had both worked all day in the cold while I was chatting with Tomasz, so my parents insisted I do one last task to tend to the animals before supper. I resisted fiercely until Tomasz took my hand and led the way.

“You are so spoiled,” he laughed softly.

“You sound like my parents,” I muttered.

“Well, maybe it’s true.” He glanced back at me, still pulling me along by my hand, but the adoration in his gaze was undeniable. “Don’t worry, Spoiled Alina. I love you anyway.”

At that, I felt a flush of pride and pleasure so strong that everything else became irrelevant.

“I love you too,” I said, and he dragged me a little farther and a little faster so that I almost crashed into him, and then at the very last second, executed a sneaky kiss.

“You are brave to do that with my father so close.” I grinned.

“Perhaps I am brave,” he said. “Or perhaps love has made me stupid.” At that, he cast a slightly anxious glance toward the house just to make sure my father hadn’t seen us, and when I burst out laughing, he kissed me again.

“Enough fun and games,” he said. “Let’s get this over and done with.”

Soon enough we were finished, and it was finally time to go inside to escape the awful weather. I moved to make a beeline for the house, but Tomasz caught my elbow and he said lightly, “Let’s go up to the hill.”

“What!” I gasped as my teeth chattered. He smiled anyway, and I laughed at him. “Tomasz! Maybe I’m a little spoiled, but you are definitely crazy.”

“Alina, moje wszystko,” he said—and that got me—it always got me, because his pet name for me meant “my everything,” and every time he said it I’d go weak at the knees. His gaze grew very serious and he said, “This is our last evening together for a while, and I want a moment with you before we sit with your parents. Please?”

The hill was a wooded peak, the very end of a long, thin thatch of thick forest left untouched simply because the ground was so rocky and the pinnacle so steep it served no useful farming purpose. That hill sheltered my house and the lands of our farm, and provided a barrier between our quiet existence and town life in Trzebinia. From the top of our hill to the building that housed both Tomasz’s family and his father’s medical practice was a brisk fifteen-minute walk, or at times when he wasn’t supposed to be there with me in the first place, an eight-minute sprint.

For as long as I could remember, the hill had always been our spot—somewhere we could enjoy both the view and in more recent years, each other. It was a place where we had privacy if we hid in the pockets of clearing between the trees. If we sat near the long, flat boulder at the very top, we had the visibility to catch any family members who might come for us, particularly Tomasz’s younger sister, Emilia, who seemed to have an instinct to come looking for us whenever our passion for each other might burn out of control.

We climbed the incline that evening until we reached the peak, and by then, what scant daylight we’d had was gone and the dull lights of the houses in Trzebinia were twinkling below us. As we took our positions on the boulder, Tomasz wrapped his arms around me and pulled me hard against his chest. He was shaking too, and at first, I thought that was because of the cold.

“This is ridiculous,” I laughed softly, turning my head toward him. “We’re going to catch our death, Tomasz!”

His arms tightened around me, just a little, and then he drew in a deep breath.

“Alina,” he said, “your father has given us permission and his blessing for a wedding, but we need to wait a few years...and by then I’ll be earning some money to provide for you anyway. We will have time to think of the details later...just know that whatever places you can dream of, I’ll find a way to take you there, Alina Dziak. We can have a good life.” His voice became rough, and he cleared his throat before he whispered, “I will give you a good life.”

I was surprised and delighted by the proposal, but also momentarily insecure, so I pulled away from him a little and asked carefully, “But how do you know you’ll still want to be with me once you see what life is like in the big city?”

He shifted then, adjusting my position so that we could face each other, and he cupped my face in his hands.

“All I know and all I need to know is that whenever we are apart, I always miss you, and I know you feel the same. That is never going to change—it doesn’t matter what college brings. You and I were made for each other—so whether you come to be with me or I come home to be with you—we will always find our way back to one another. This is just a little pause now, but you’ll see. Time apart will change nothing.”

This was just another amazing story Tomasz was telling—only this time, it was the story of our future, and a promise that we would share one after all. I could see it in my mind as if it had already happened—I knew in that moment that we would marry, and we would have babies, and then we would grow old together. I was astounded by the love I felt for Tomasz, and that I could see that same desperate love mirrored in his eyes felt like a miracle.

I was the luckiest girl in Poland—the luckiest girl on Earth, to find such a wonderful man and to have him love me back just as deeply as I loved him. He was clever, and so kind, and so handsome—and Tomasz Slaski had the most amazing eyes. They were a startling shade of green, and they always sparkled just a little, as if he was quietly enjoying a mischievous secret. I pulled him close then and I pressed my face into his neck.