I step gingerly through the long grass until I can snap a photo that includes both the house and the barn, then send it back to Mom.

Please show Babcia. This is the first residential address on her list. We can’t find birth records for Babcia here in Trzebinia and the guide thought that might mean she was born elsewhere, but this looks exactly as she described her childhood home to me.

It’s 6:00 a.m. back home, so I know Mom will be on her way to the hospital before work but I expect it will still be some time before she replies. Zofia and I wander around the house separately. She heads toward the barn; I walk right up to one of the small windows at the side of the house to peer inside. It’s difficult to see through the tattered curtain and dust that clings to the pane of glass in the window, but from what I can see, it appears the building was split into several tiny rooms. As my eyes adjust to the darkness inside, I can see a living room of sorts—there’s a potbellied stove, sofa bed and small dining area. The table and one of the chairs are both off center, as if someone has stood up too roughly from dinner and failed to put it all back in place.

I wonder suddenly if this house has been abandoned since the war. If so, I’m looking through a window but seeing back in time almost eighty years. I have no idea how or why Babcia came to leave this place, but it’s unexpectedly eerie to think that I might be staring all the way back into that point of her life. Maybe she was sitting at that table when the moment came when her life changed forever, and maybe that journey she began that day ended all the way in America and with our family.

Just as I step away from the window, my mom calls.

“Hi,” I smile down the camera lens.

“Alice, hello,” Mom says. “I have one very excited grandmother here.”

She turns the phone to Babcia, who has tears pouring down her face, and is grinning at me like I’ve just discovered the holy grail.

“Jen dobry, Babcia,” I say, and she gives me a delighted smile and an awkward clap. I flip the camera and walk all around the house—showing her the fields, the decrepit barn and even the long-overgrown yard around the house. As I walk around, I shift my gaze from the fall of my steps to her reaction on the screen. I watch the dawning joy and sadness and longing on her face, and I know we’re at the right place.

I can’t help but imagine this scene playing out in a very different way if we’d made this trip together ten years ago. I’d have asked her a million or more questions. Maybe she’d have answered some.

“Alice,” Mom interrupts me, after a few minutes, and then it’s her face filling the screen again. “I need to get to chambers. Is that it, then? She seems...” Mom’s eyes flick from the camera, then back to me. She shrugs and smiles, and her sudden approval is quite dazzling. “You know? She suddenly seems incredibly happy.”

“Good,” I say, and I beam at her. “Good.” I pause, thinking again about that missing birth record, then ask, “Mom, did she ever tell you she was born in the house she grew up in?”

“That’s right. She and her twin brothers and her sister were all born at home.”

I glance at Zofia. She’s tilted her head to the side and she’s staring at the iPad curiously.

“Huh,” Zofia murmurs thoughtfully. She raises her voice a little as she confirms, “Twin brothers, you say?”

“Hello there,” Mom says, frowning. “Who is that, Alice?” I adjust the camera so that Mom can see Zofia, and Zofia waves and smiles.

“Mom, meet Zofia, Zofia meet my mom—Judge Julita Slaski-Davis.”

“It is so lovely to meet you, Julita,” Zofia says. “Tell me, was Hanna the youngest of her family?”

“That’s correct. She used to tell me she was the spoiled baby girl, although I don’t imagine spoiled in her childhood context means the same as it does in ours.”

“Do you know her siblings’ names?”

Mom looks uncharacteristically uncertain.

“I always thought the sister’s name was Amelia, but then we saw the list she wrote for Alice last week and it said Emilia so I’m not really sure...”

“Emilia was Pa’s little sister,” I confirm for Mom, and she sighs.

“I’m really not at all sure how it all fits together. I distinctly remember her saying she was writing to her sister, but maybe I’m wrong...”

“Perhaps her parents’ names...” Zofia prompts. “Do you know what they were?”

“I only remember her mother’s name. That was definitely Faustina,” Mom gives a little laugh. “The Catholic church canonized a Saint Faustina...goodness, maybe twenty years ago, and Babcia was excited like a kid in a candy store.”

“Ah. Her mother was Faustina, and her father was...” Zofia reaches into her handbag and withdraws her iPad, then says, “Bartuk. Yes?”

I see Mom glance beside herself, and I can hear some kind of movement offscreen. Mom is frowning.

“What is it, Mom? Is everything okay?”

“Hang on a minute, Alice,” Mom says, and the camera shows her walking back to the bed. She sets the phone down for a moment, onto the bedside table I think, and all I can see is the ceiling in the hospital room. “Mama? Are you okay?”

The camera swings wildly, and for a minute, the camera is blocked by a finger. It shifts, and then I see Babcia’s face.

“Hello, Babcia,” I murmur, by habit. She looks distressed and frustrated, and I peer helplessly into the screen. “Mom? Could you give her the iPad? I think wants to tell us something.”

“Alice, did you say she still understands spoken Polish?” Zofia asks me softly. I nod, and she extends her hand toward my phone. “Do you mind if I...may I?”

I pass her the phone, and Zofia smiles gently into the camera. She speaks very slowly and carefully for a few minutes in Polish. A single tear rolls down Babcia’s cheek, but she’s nodding. Zofia looks at me and she grins.

“Well, that’s one mystery solved.”

“It is?”

“Alina Dziak was the youngest child of Faustina and Bartuk Dziak. They had four children...a daughter, Truda, twin sons and then Alina. I only remembered the composition of the family because the twins and Alina were born very close together and I felt so sorry for poor Faustina,” Zofia says wryly, but then she sobers. “Alice, I just asked your grandmother if she is Alina, and she’s nodding yes.”

My eyes widen.

“What? Mom? Are you listening to this?”

I see Mom hand Babcia the iPad, and she takes her phone back. Her face fills the screen, and she’s frowning.