Ioana returns to Romania when her beloved father is dying. Her guilt at moving away turns to horror when she discovers that her brother, Father’s long-time care-taker, is involved in human trafficking.
‘Who are you to damn me? To criticise what I decide?’ Florin slams a fist into his open palm. ‘You abandoned us thirty years ago. I stayed here in Ploieşti. I have lived next door on the same street, all this time. I’ve seen him and Mama almost every day.’
My beloved father; it’s too late. I want to scream. My throat is tight, teeth pressed hard together. The late afternoon sun’s rays shoot onto my blouse, make a shadow of my livid brother. It should be the other way around; me, the dark devil, and Florin, the golden angel. I am the damned one who left Romania in the 1970s with my husband and child when Ceaușescu’s draconian repression threatened to starve us all. Now the scales of justice have tipped at the great weight of my trespass. Of course, they’ve been slanting against me for decades, surfacing in Florin’s flippant remarks, in his silences. I knew all along and I didn’t know. Anguish wrenches out my words: ‘I could have come, long before I did. There was only you to tell me. Mama is deaf and doesn’t use email – how could I have learned from her?’
