Anna never particularly enjoyed her quiet, humbly busy life in Łeba. Resigned to the role of nurse to her ailing mother at a young age, Anna missed out on simple childhood pleasures of art, reading or tending rag dolls. Her mother believed in work, and had been a relentlessly bustling homemaker until the day she fell ill. Anna often felt that her mother shouldered all those burdens onto Anna in her place, and in a ceaseless barrage of caustic remarks expected Anna to perform every duty to nothing less than perfection. Anna was her daughter, after all; she should be able to do things at least half as well as her mother.

Anna grew up with toothmarks in her tongue, always biting back everything she wished to say. Guilt often smothered her when the blazes of frustration and indignation fizzled out. Why did she hate home? Why did she even hate her mother sometimes? Other times she looked at the sallow face that had once been round and cherry-cheeked like hers and felt overwhelming love and pity and remorse all at once and promised for the millionth time she'd keep her anger subdued.

Escaping the house on errands was always a thrill for Anna. So much of her life was confined to four cottage walls. She envied her old schoolmates who had friendships and freedom, and begrudged them for how they'd complained over the most meager inconveniences. Trips into town—pungent sea air, clamor, different faces—replenished Anna's resolve. 

Had she foreseen the consequences of one trip to the harbor, she would have gladly stayed at home for the rest of her life.

She met him while wandering the pier to sell pastries for pennies to sailors who hadn't eaten bread softer than a brick in months. In the boiling crowd of weather-beaten whalers storming the quay to their friends and family, one sailor hung back. He watched the raucous bustle and chewed on a whalebone pipe in the half-starved way of someone who thought he might eventually reach marrow. Raggedy and skinny as a coat rack, he wore his canvas shirt knotted at the waist to keep it off his knees. Yet despite the exhaustion, he had a smile that beamed right through the shadow of his wool-felt hat. It could've set tallow ablaze.

Anna  maneuvered through the sea of heavy boots and bumping  elbows, drawn to that smile like a beacon draws boats. Somehow, she knew that skinny sailor in the big crumpled hat had something to tell her. A story, an omen, something—

She halted squarely in front of him, close enough that the shadow from the brim of his hat blotted the sun from melting in her eyelashes. She grasped the handle of her basket. Words clotted and blended into paste  in her throat. Unperturbed by her silence and proximity, he tilted his head towards her basket and said around his pipe in a voice unexpectedly hushed and sleepy,

"How much for your rogal?" 

Anna thrust her basket towards him and demanded he take it all. His grin never faltered. Anna wondered if he'd expected that from the start. 

They talked, about everything and nothing, idling on the dock until the sky was purple and Anna knew her mother missed her. Christy Mulligan captivated her. His haggard appearance and rough mannerisms and uncouth habits did nothing to dilute the small calm sweetness of his voice, the carefree thrill of that smile that would've been more suited to a schoolchild than a hardened sailor. He was young, serving his own whims, tethered to no one.

He tugged his hat back so the sunset coated his face in honey hues and told Anna that he'd never had someone to wait for him ashore. She barely remembered her bread basket. Somehow she really had come there for Christy. Or, maybe, he'd come there for her.

Leaving Christy felt like she was leaving home instead of going back. 

The drudgery and dread of each day faded under the excitement of a first torrential love; a first taste of something for her far away from the shackles of her mother. Anna sent letters. Christy couldn't read, but surely he'd have shipmates who could. It didn't even matter if he heard the words or not. He'd find comfort simply in the fact that he held a token of her fond thoughts in his hands. Each time he came home, he had those letters tucked in the ribbon of his hat, creased and damp with seaspray and wrinkled from a half-million tender touches.

But one evening, Anna labored over a letter in a way she never had before. She stared at the linen until the candle dripped and the flame fizzled. She wrote in a quaking hand that left more inkblots than words and prayed that there would be some willing shipmate to read this letter to Christy. Prayed that this wouldn't be just a token pinned to his hat. She couldn't wait until he came home again in so many unnumbered months. He needed to know that he would be a father.

They'd talked about family. A new one; one of their own. He wanted children just as she did. He had promised he'd marry her—he was saving every shilling, dreaming of the day he could come home to her with enough for a home and life of their own. But things were out of order now. His whaling endeavors would have to end.

Anna waited as she'd waited so many agonizing months before. She wondered what her mother would say. Wondered why things happened so slowly, yet too quickly to comprehend. For the first time, she realized she was young and knew so little. She suspected that, for all his world-weariness and confidence, Christy was the same. He wouldn't arrive before the baby did. 

Days sailed. Weeks crawled. Months limped. Anna felt them like decades. She carried her baby to the quay and held his face to the sea breeze. Ships unloaded; they were all alike to her. Sailors brewed out. Christy never came.

That same old unshakeable faith that Christy was invulnerable to the dangers of the sea blinded Anna. He couldn't have come to harm now. The timing was too precise; too convenient. He had gotten her letter. He'd gotten every other letter. This one couldn't be different.

The anger and bitterness she'd struggled with from childhood strangled her. She really had aged eons in months. She looked back on herself in a twisted disgust to hide the heartbreak. After so long in the doldrums, why had she believed in a man—a boy—to whisk her into a new life of peace and contentment? He'd been unwilling to accept an early parenthood. Unwilling to take on an unexpected responsibility. Unwilling to give up the freedom of the sea just yet. He'd left her behind with a baby and a burden.

A young mother and abandoned lover, Anna became venomously bitter. She shut out the idea of ever opening her heart to someone else. It was too agonizing to have so much happiness within arms' reach only to have it snatched back with no regard. She barred her door to men with a loathing potent enough to startle even herself. 

Perhaps it was for the best that she was a single mother. She could raise her son to be better, shielding him from any masculine influences that could mold him into someone selfish and careless as his father. She decided with solid resolve that Jerzy was the only boy she'd ever love. She determined to give him all the care and affection in the world to make up for the father that left them behind.