19

Sunday, 28 June

Day Seven

Whoever was on kitchen duty rang the meal alarm triangle—the actual musical instrument—way too loudly for Kate’s sensitive ears.

She ignored the summons. Today wasn’t a work day anyway. Later, people would be going to the nearest town to buy supplies. They could go wherever they wanted on weekends so long as they were ready to work Monday morning.

Today would be a lazy Sunday, she decided. Napping, reading her sapphic detective novel, and whenever she felt hungry she’d obtain food from the house. And lots and lots of coffee.

She’d been dozing when she heard her name called from outside her tent. A man cleared his throat and called again. She rubbed her eyes, spilled water from her bottle onto her palm and washed her face, then unzipped the tent flap.

Ben stood at the entrance, a thermos in one hand, two mugs hooked on two fingers, and a bowl covered with tin foil cupped by his other hand.

“Go måren.” His bearded face twitched into a nervous smile.

“Hey,” she groaned out, squinting at Ben’s looming form silhouetted by the much-too-bright sky. “Morning.”

“I, eh, saved you some breakfast.” He nodded at the bowl in his hand. “And coffee.”

The situation slowly sunk into her groggy brain, and when clarity hit, she smiled up at him.

He invited her inside his trailer and poured them both a cup of coffee already thinned out by milk. Scrambled eggs and home fries flavored to perfection with red and green bell pepper, onion, and salt. Fresh peach slices on the side. She moaned her contentment through a full mouth.

“Yeah,” he said, “it was good. Sorry it is not hot anymore.”

“I don’t even care,” she tried to say with three potato chunks in her mouth. “I love it. But you didn’t have to bring me breakfast.”

He nodded slowly a few times. “I wanted to apologize for last night.”

“Apologize? You didn’t—no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to grab your arm like that. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. If I sat too close, or—”

“It wasn’t that.”

His gaze was fixed on his coffee, the mug cradled in his palms like it was something precious.

She let the mood sink in. Despite her curiosity, she said, “It’s fine. You don’t need to explain.”

He swept his loose, wild hair back, and his temporalis muscles bulged as he clenched his jaw. “Yes, I do. Need to explain. I want to. Not—not now. But I will.” He offered her a strained, apologetic smile. “Is that alright?”

“Well, yeah. Of course. But are you, like, okay? Right now?”

His fingers pressed against his mug hard enough for the tips to blanch. “Yeah,” he said, and she thought it a partial lie. “Yeah, I’m okay.” His mouth quirked up. “Are you coming to town?”

“Hm? No.” She looked away, out the trailer window at the grass, at a small dark patch of it. “No. I’m such a space cadet today.”

“Do you need anything from the market?”

She shook her head.

His t-shirt, pale yellow on which was printed Of Quartz I Love Geology, made her smile every time she looked at it.

Kate’s book had just gotten to the good part—the protagonist was having a spat with her girlfriend about something petty, and they were certainly seconds away from passionately making up—when the shuttle van pulled into camp.

She crawled out of her tent to see students hauling crates of groceries to the house. A van door slammed violently, and Ben emerged from the passenger side. Her greeting went ignored as he moved fast, carrying his laptop bag as he stomped to his trailer, disappearing inside. She heard a crash within, followed by yelling. Jorunn stood at the van’s driver door, looking defeated, then climbed back into the van to drive it to the parking area at the camp border.

At the trailer door, Kate listened, then gave a tentative knock. “Ben?” she called. “You okay in there?”

When he opened the door, his face was set in a scowl, eyes unblinking.

“H-hey,” she said. “Did you and Jorunn have a fight?”

His expression shifted into something more quizzical. “No,” was all he said.

“Oh.” She pressed a tooth onto her tongue. “Okay. But… You looked pissed off. Is there anything I can do? Take a workload off your shoulders? Have someone killed?”

It took a few seconds, but Ben relaxed, grabbing something above the doorway and leaning his forehead on the head jamb.

“I know a guy,” she continued. “Just gimme a name. Whack!” She pounded her fist into her palm. “Problem solved.”

His beard twitched with resistance to a smile. “Truly?”

“No, silly.”

His body jostled with a muted laugh.

She looked at her watch. “Hey, guess what time it is.”

“Hm?”

“Beer-thirty. Join me?”

They set two camping chairs in front of the trailer, facing west, ready to watch the sunset, a cooler of ice-cold Molson at their feet. Zoe’s strumming sent quiet acoustic music down the hill as the sun began its descent behind the forest canopy.

“It is my daughter,” Ben said, finally breaking their reverent, beer-drinking silence. “Frida. She—we are having problems.”

“She’s a teenager. I imagine it isn’t easy.”

“It is more than that.” He kept his gaze on his beer. “I lied to you. After our first conference call.”

“Okay. I’m trying to remember.”

“You asked about my family. I said they were fine. And they are. My parents and sisters and Lina and Frida, they are all fine, but…” He stroked his beard, then scratched the chin buried deep beneath. “I wasn’t sure if you knew, and now I think you do not. Lina and I…we finished. About two years ago.”

Kate gawked at him, and her beer can crunched under her tightened grip. “I see,” she said, in absolute awe of the universe.

She drained her beer before opening another.

“Things were okay with Frida and I for a while,” he continued. “Not great, but not bad. Not until this year.” He drained his beer then retrieved another from the cooler, sighing as he reclined again into the camping chair. “I haven’t seen Frida since April.”

“What? That’s… Shit, Ben.”

“Yes. One big pile of shit.”

“And I’m guessing today was more shit?”

He rubbed his temple. “Yes. We will be remediating. I worry Lina will ask for sole custody and that I will never see Frida again.”

“Fuck. I’m so sorry.”

Why hadn’t he said anything earlier? Was he embarrassed, like she was? And something going on with his daughter? Hell, no wonder he was so subdued.

Ben was single. Ben was single? No, of course he wasn’t. People like Ben were never single. Maybe he hoped to get back together with Lina.

Shit. Wait. Stop.

Kate chugged the rest of her beer, then crushed the can against her knee.

It was time to tell him.

—

Esben was amused by Kate’s antics, crushing the can and chucking it toward the road.

Though occasionally Kate would take on a professional air, standing tall and adopting a gentle fluidity to her movements, most of the time she had the posture and grace of a rugby player. This hadn’t changed. Her rough and athletic air seemed to be her natural, casual state, and anything else was a show to hide her true self, shifting gears whenever the situation called for it.

She was looking away from him, toward the western sky, now a vibrant orange that set the contours of her hair on fire.

“My thing seems so petty now,” she said as she reached for a new can, cracked it open, stared at it. Her mouth puffed as she exhaled. “I sort of lied to you, too.”

Before he could speculate upon what Kate might have lied to him about, she obliterated his ability to think with:

“Nikki left me.”

His mouth went dry, and he looked away, sipped his beer, sipped again. The pain of the situation with Frida was quickly replaced by a whole new set of anxieties.

“She left about a month before the first conference call,” Kate continued. “Didn’t say anything because…” She took a long sip of her beer. “I guess I didn’t want to be the middle-aged woman who’d been dumped. Not when you had this perfect—” She frowned at him. “Sorry. What I thought was a perfect relationship. Perfect family.”

Esben hadn’t noticed his fingernails scratching on the nylon sleeve of the chair arm before, but the tiny motions made the most unpleasant sound and sensation. He flattened his palm against his thigh to stop himself.

Something brushed against his arm—Kate, tilting her beer can toward him. The beer, her smile, and the sunset light brought a familiar scene to mind. He relaxed, then ticked the rim of her can with his.

“I have no idea what I’m toasting,” she said. “Here’s to us, I guess. For being human. Cheers.”

He couldn’t help but smile. “Skål.”

“Skal,” she repeated, her accent off. “We should get drunk. Very, very drunk.”

He chuckled. “We would need to try harder than with light beer. Anyway, we should not. We have kitchen duty tomorrow.”

“What? No. No! That’s tomorrow?”

“Yes. Yes.”

Her whine slid into a groan as she slouched in her chair. “Do I have to?”

“I will be there as well.”

“Ugh, fine. But don’t expect me to be chipper. I don’t do chipper before nine.”

“I will make the coffee if that is incentive enough.”

“Good man,” she said, tipping her can to him.

The sun sank below the trees, and Zoe serenaded the camp as pink wisps of clouds ushered in the blue hour.

“I’m sorry about Lina,” Kate said. “And Frida.”

“And I am sorry about Nikki.”

After glowing in the sunset, Kate glimmered in the twilight—copper hair now ebony, skin silver instead of gold.

He stood before he lost himself to his mind’s portrait of her. “Go natt, Kate. Sleep well.”

“You too,” she said, her voice soft. “Goodnight.”

Esben settled into bed with his phone as it shuffled through a playlist of songs by his favorite singer, Ane Brun. Most in English, many in Norwegian, some in Swedish. Folk music, light jazz, covers of famous songs. Ane’s lofty voice transported him to a world where his personal life and his body weren’t in ruins, a place where he could forget. But as much as he tried to stop them, his thoughts kept returning to Kate.

Kate was single. Maybe. Would she have moved on in such a short time? He should have told her back in May. They could have been talking about it this whole time, sharing their pain, bonding.

…No.

Kate was a colleague and, technically, under his employ. He shouldn’t be considering her personal life at all. Even if she offered. Even if she confided in him. They were barely friends, anymore. He shouldn’t be dragging her into his mess of a life.

‘Perfect family,’ she had said.

He scoffed, and the ache in his gut returned.