20
Monday, 29 June
Day Eight
Kate slogged into the kitchen, yawning loudly, squinting against the fluorescent overhead light. She was wearing what she’d slept in: baggy lounge pants and a tank top, though she’d slipped on a bra.
Ben, dressed in clean work clothes with his hair tied back, was already chopping vegetables. Quiet acoustic music played from his phone. He peered over his shoulder at her as she approached, then returned his attention to the cutting board.
“You’re late,” he said in a comically stern voice.
She was seconds away from throwing something at him, but he quickly tossed her a smile.
“Coffee?” she rasped.
“Ready and waiting.”
She grunted.
The coffee was strong. Hair-on-your-chest strong, as her grandmother used to say.
“Thank you,” she whispered to the coffee. To Ben, she asked, “Why are you chopping carrots?”
“For lunch. The stew.”
“Oh. And breakfast?”
“Bacon and eggs.”
“Easy.”
“Stew prep first. It will save time for later in the morning.”
She recalled mention of a recipe book, found it on the pantry shelf, then looked for the page for the stew.
“It is not in the book,” Ben said.
“No? Okay. Why not?” She picked up a potato and started peeling it.
“Because I cook it for the camp.”
“Secret family recipe?”
He smiled at the carrots. “I like to pretend it is, yes. It is called lapskaus. Beef stew.”
“A Norwegian thing?”
“Yes. Norwegian thing.”
“Fun. I can’t remember if we ate that while at our field school.”
“We ate a version of it. It was not very good.”
Kate snorted. “Well, alright then. Lapskaus à la Ben this time.”
“Indeed.”
As she watched him, an unnamable emotion wrapped around her—a warm blanket, a lover’s embrace from behind. The image of him smiling at the cutting board felt inexplicably intimate.
“Is the coffee helping?” he asked.
She tossed potato peelings into the trash. “As much as it could. I had trouble falling asleep last night.”
He knifed the chopped carrots into a big mixing bowl, glanced at her, then chopped the potato she’d peeled.
“Do you often have trouble sleeping?” he asked her.
“Yes. But it got worse, um, you know. A couple months ago.”
He nodded and grabbed another peeled potato.
She kept one eye on the peeler and the other on Ben. He looked comfortable with a knife, chopping, slicing, no hesitation before bringing the blade down. In contrast, even the peeler made her nervous—raw potatoes were slippery.
“Have you been sleeping okay?” she asked. “With all that’s going on.”
“I’m sleeping. Sometimes excessively, I admit.”
Kate wanted to delve into what happened with him and Lina, wanted to ask what happened yesterday to send him into a rage, and what was wrong with touching his left arm. But the kitchen door clicked open, and in strutted Jorunn at 5:12 am, dressed and ready for her sunrise yoga.
“Go måren,” she said, giving Ben a playful clap on his shoulder.
“Morning,” Kate said as Ben said the same in Norwegian.
Jorunn poured coffee from the towering percolator and sat herself at a table to read a magazine.
The music on Ben’s phone switched to something jazzy.
“I like your music,” Kate said. “Acoustic stuff.”
“It’s Ane Brun. I have all her songs downloaded.”
“Yeah? I’m not familiar with her.”
Proudly, he said, “She’s Norwegian.”
Kate grinned and handed Ben a peeled potato. “Play me your favorite.”
He eyed her before setting down his knife and washing his hands. After scrolling through his phone, he selected a song.
“It is an old song, but a new recording.” He washed his hands again, then picked up the knife and a potato.
Kate didn’t know the song, which wasn’t a surprise. The acoustic guitar’s melody was lively but gentle, folky. When it gave way to a woman’s angelic voice, she froze. The lyrics, in English, were intimate—about love, being in love, and what one did when in love. The song might as well have been an embrace.
Ben was looking at her expectantly, and her gaze fell to his open palm.
“Potato,” he said.
“What?”
“Potato?”
When she handed a peeled potato to him, their fingers grazed, and the tiny, inconsequential sensation sent tingles straight to her core. His outstretched hand lingered, potato-laden, even after she pulled away.
Her mouth was an absolute desert. Chugging coffee helped.
“It’s a good song,” she said. “You ever play her stuff on guitar?”
He hesitated before uttering a quiet No.
His demeanor shifted. He no longer smiled at the cutting board, no longer looked at her, his thoughts seemingly far, far away.
Kate took the cue and dropped the conversation, and instead listened to the music as she tried not to skin her fingers with the potato peeler.
After his short on-site morning lecture, Esben and Jorunn monitored the students’ and volunteers’ excavation progress at the mead hall. But instead of watching the students, Jorunn was side-eyeing him, shooting him small, knowing smiles like she had figured out an embarrassing secret of his.
When he caught her grinning at him yet again, he waved for her to follow him. Once out of earshot of the others, he asked in Norwegian, “Why do you look at me this way?”
Her lips twitched. “You like her.”
He returned his attention to the units, and she jabbed his side with her elbow. His reactive smile was completely beyond his control.
She gasped. “Bjørni! I have not seen you smile like this in years!”
He groaned. “Must you call me this?”
“Do not change the subject. Is my little brother in love?”
“I am not your brother. And I am hardly little.”
“You are my little brother from another mother, and you cannot tell me otherwise.” She grinned at him again—there was no winning this. “Is that why you recommended her? Was Anna in on it?”
“Jorunn…”
“Esben…”
He tried to think of something he could say to end the discussion. Anything at all. But his mind kept returning to Kate, to her funny t-shirts, and to her eyes that were both brown and green.
“What are you going to do about it?” Jorunn continued. “Or do you expect her to do the seducing? You men, so lazy!”
“I am not lazy,” he said. Then, under his breath, he confessed, “I’m terrified.” He dragged his palms down his face and beard. “It would be too difficult.”
“Perhaps she is worth the effort. Do you know if she feels the same? I will find out for you.”
“No, you will not. Helvete—you and Alex both.”
“Ooh, Alex knows? Interesting. We can have a conference. A reverse intervention.”
Esben shook his head and smiled. “You’re terrible.”
Jorunn clapped, grabbed, then shook his shoulder, bringing out a thunderous laugh that he hadn’t heard from himself in years.
Every osteologist had a weak spot. Sometimes ribs, often teeth. Kate’s were hand and foot bones. To her, the carpals and small tarsals were identical little nuggets of bone, particularly those of a subadult individual that hadn’t yet developed into their final form. But she didn’t need a book to arrange these bones or carefully side phalanges. The hands and feet of the anatomically correct plastic adult human skeleton, except for the two large tarsals of each ankle, were loosely set into alignment with cord.
Ben had returned to camp early with her to complete lunch prep, and when that was finished, she began setting up for her afternoon lecture, laying out the plastic skeleton on a side table away from the main eating area. Tomorrow, the students would be introduced to the cemetery properly, up close and personal.
“Going okay?” came Ben’s voice from the kitchen that smelled of beef stew.
Kate continued laying out the left leg bones. “Yep. I love these newer plastic skeletons. So well made. No tiny bones that end up lost.”
“Last year, the plastic child skeleton disappeared.”
She whipped toward him. “No! The whole thing?”
“We were packing up on the last day,” he said, walking towards her, “and it was not where it should have been. Anna was in a panic—you know how much those things cost.”
“Right. Did you ever find it?”
He picked up the right femur, examined it. “No.”
“You’re kidding.”
“We think we know who walked off with it. An older gentleman who volunteered. He never returned after that season.”
“Well, shit. If anything’s to go missing, better it a fake skeleton than—”
“It was not the only thing to disappear.”
She grimaced. “Do I want to know?”
He sighed. “A dagger. A well-preserved one.”
“Oh, hell. Talk about looting. And you never found it?”
“No. Never. It vanished. We like to joke that Loki came by and stole it.”
“Could it have been another older gentleman volunteer?”
“No, no volunteers at that time. Its disappearance remains a mystery.”
“I suppose you didn’t force everyone to have their belongings searched?”
“Oh, Erik insisted. He was enraged.”
“I can’t blame him.”
The plastic skeleton was almost fully arranged, just the ribs left to do. Kate peered up at Ben, whose attention was on the skeleton.
“So, hey,” she said. “You mentioned you’re having problems with Frida but never said what. If I can help, let me know. It’s been a while since I was a teenager, but I never fully outgrew rebelliousness, so I’m told.”
Ben jostled from a laugh, but his amusement quickly sank into sorrow.
“Whatever it is,” she continued, “I’m sure it will pass. For now, you’re probably the enemy getting in the way of her inner raging hormone monster.”
He leaned against the wall, crossed his arms, and frowned at the skeleton. “I don’t know if it will pass,” he said, voice breaking.
Kate grasped his elbow and gave it a friendly squeeze. “Is she getting into trouble?”
“No.”
“And she’s healthy? Safe?”
“As far as I know.”
“Then be thankful for that, at least.”
His hand slid over hers, gently holding her there.
Voices outside. Lunch time.
“Find a way to talk to her.” Kate slipped her hand out from Ben’s light grasp as footsteps approached the house. “And if you can, let yourself be vulnerable with her.”
After dinner, Esben drove Alex’s truck to Reception Point, a location about fifteen minutes from camp toward the nearest town where there was reliable mobile network reception. Reception Point was actually the unpaved parking lot of a boarded restaurant and decommissioned filling station.
The last message he sent to Frida was a brief hello over a week ago, and he had received no reply. He hadn’t expected one, but the confirmation hurt.
He considered what else he could say to her. If he should message her at all. Not messaging her, ignoring her in return, felt wrong. It felt like giving up, something a parent should never do. If he stopped trying to communicate with Frida, how was that different from letting Lina have full custody?
He had driven out here determined to take Kate’s advice, to somehow make himself vulnerable to Frida. He had spent so much time convincing himself to do this but now realized he had spent no time considering how.
Should he tell his child how hurt he was? That felt like he was blaming her, and he didn’t. For most of their problems, he blamed both Lina and himself.
He looked outside at the bluest of skies, at the shrubs and trees around the parking lot. This spot was nothing special, but he took a photo of the scenery, of the sky and its fluffy clouds. Kate’s advice and the word vulnerable bounced around in his head. He turned on selfie mode and smiled. The photo—a close-up of him wearing sunglasses—was acceptable.