After dinner, the little group sat in the living room, savoring Sam’s pound cake and drinking decaf. “I’m going to have to disagree with you, Sam,” Rob said. “Kari may be a creative mastermind, but you definitely have it going on where baked goods are at.”
Kari nodded. The cake’s texture was perfect, the flavor the right balance between tart and sweet as it spread across her tongue.
Graham gave Sam a look of pride, then glanced at Kari, his light eyes shining behind his glasses. “It’s true. She made me julekake a couple of weeks ago. It was amazing.”
Kari’s eyebrows shot up. “You made julekake? But it’s not Christmas.”
Rob’s bewildered face swiveled to look at the rest of the group. “Is this more Norwegian insider talk?”
“Norwegian food,” Kari said.
“You haven’t told him about lutefisk have you?” Sam asked with a sly smile.
Kari shook her head. “No. I don’t want to scare him. But he told me to do eeny-meeny-miney-mo to make a decision and was a little taken aback when I busted out elle melle, deg fortelle instead.”
Sam laughed, and Kari realized it was the first time in over a month she had heard that sound. A pang of time lost shot through her at the same time as a surge of elation.
“If you ladies have had enough of your inside jokes, I’d like to know what kind of baked goods I’m missing out on,” Rob said with a long-suffering air.
“Bread,” Graham said. “With cardamom and candied fruit and nuts.”
“Fruitcake?” Rob’s brows scrunched together and his nose wrinkled.
“No. Most definitely bread,” Graham corrected. “Delicious. Sam’s informed me that there will be no more until Christmas, though.” He laid a hand over his heart and looked at the ceiling, the picture of a wounded man.
“But…I still don’t know why you made Christmas bread in June,” Kari said.
“It was a thank-you,” Sam said, darting a pleased glance at Graham. “Gray’s brother is an attorney. He’s helping us with the Norwegian lawyer. To sell the farm.”
“You’re…selling Litengård?” Kari’s throat closed and she set her plate down on the coffee table.
“I have to,” Sam said, her face the picture of helpless woe. “I can’t afford to keep a farm in the U.S., let alone one in another country.”
Kari nodded, numb. Sam inheriting the farm had been what started this mess in the first place. Mor’s family had lost it in a debt to Sam’s real grandfather’s family, the Johannasens. Mor had married Einar Johannasen on the assurance that he would return the farm to her family. Instead, he had taken her to America and his family had kept the farm. Einar’s brother, Sam’s great-uncle, had left the property to Sam upon his death, apparently in a fit of conscience.
Kari had known and accepted the farm was Sam’s. And that meant she could do as she liked with it. So why did it hurt so much to know she was selling it?
“Are you okay?” Sam asked.
“Sure,” Kari said with a brightness she knew sounded forced and off.
Sam pushed the last little morsel of cake around her plate. “I should have consulted you. Before deciding to sell.”
Kari shook her head and picked up her coffee. Her throat was dry. “No, you shouldn’t have. You inherited Litengård, not me. It’s yours to do whatever you want with.”
Rob watched the byplay between Kari and Sam with increasing bewilderment. What were they even talking about? He glanced at Graham. The younger man’s expression was concerned, but he didn’t look puzzled.
But now wasn’t the time to ask for explanations. The rift between aunt and niece had been well on its way to being repaired and now something else was going on.
“Bestemor was your mother,” Sam said.
“Yes, and Einar Johannasen was your grandfather. And his brother left the farm to you.”
“But the Johannasens shouldn’t have had it in the first place. It should have been in Bestemor’s family, not my…grandfather’s.” She said the last word as if the utterance cost her something. Or as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.
Kari leaned over and grasped Sam’s wrist. “I happen to think this is the best outcome. After all, I ended up inheriting everything from Mor.”
“That wasn’t much,” Sam said.
“I don’t care. You deserve something. Can we drop it? Enjoy your inheritance? Have something for yourself for once?”
Sam swallowed and nodded, but Rob saw it was with reluctance. And looking at Kari’s tense, unhappy face, he couldn’t tease out what was misery on her niece’s behalf and what might be personal heartache.
Graham held up a hand. “May I ask something?”
Kari leaned back in her chair. “Of course.”
“Are you upset that Litengård went to Sam or are you unhappy with how she is disposing of it?”
Kari’s face worked. “I don’t know.” Tears glistened in her eyes but didn’t fall.
Rob ached. He looked at Sam, who looked at her aunt with an anguished expression.
“So if I’m understanding this correctly, Sam inherited property in Norway?” Rob asked. Both women nodded.
“Family property,” Sam said with a guilty glance at Kari.
“It’s a windfall. Take it.” Now Kari just seemed weary and resigned.
“Is there any way you could compromise? Do something like sell most of the land and keep the house?” Rob asked.
Sam shook her head. “The attorney in Norway found a buyer who wants to turn it into an agritourism place—kind of like a bed and breakfast, but the guests help out on the farm. For that, they need the house as well as the actual working part of the farm.”
“Is that the only possible buyer?” Rob asked.
Graham rested his hand on Sam’s, squeezing it a little. “What would be the point of having a house in an expensive, distant foreign country? How would she maintain it? If she hired people to look after it, how would she know they could be trusted? And even if she was able to sell just the farmland, how long would the money last to keep the house maintained? And all for what? It’s a lot to ask.”
“Good grief,” Kari said, her face going pale. “Graham’s right. I can barely handle owning a house I live in. I can’t imagine what it would be like to deal with that. I’m sorry, Sam. I should have known you’d sell it. It’s logical. I just…didn’t think beyond the idea that Mor was getting justice.”
“It’s okay.” Sam leaned her head on Graham’s shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her and looked down at her drawn face.
“I think it’s probably time for us to hit the road,” Graham said. “Thanks for a great meal, Kari. Nice to meet you, Rob.”
The four of them got to their feet and moved to the foyer where Rob shook Graham’s hand and Kari and Sam hugged. Sam gave him a solemn look and pointed her finger at Rob as Graham opened the door.
“Don’t be a jackass again,” she said.
“I’ll try not to be.” Rob smiled.
“Okay then.” She smiled at Kari, then went out with Graham.
Kari closed the door and leaned back against it. “Well, that went…well? Maybe?”
“Well on some levels, okay on others,” Rob said.
“What did you think of Gray?” Concern etched furrows in Kari’s brow.
“Solid guy. Besotted with your niece. If he was age-appropriate for Mia and she brought him home and he behaved that way, I’d give him the Dad seal of approval.”
Kari’s shoulders sagged. “I’m relieved. I thought so too, but he’s kind of quiet. Not a lot to go on. And I’m not used to this. I haven’t met anyone Sam’s dated in years. She had a really bad experience a while ago and was leery about dating. But for a second there I thought they were going to announce they were getting engaged.”
“And that would be a bad thing?”
Kari flung up her hands. “It just seems so fast. Like everything else. That flash flood feeling I was talking about. I feel caught up in too many things I can’t control.”
Rob reached out, wrapped his fingers around hers and tugged her away from the door. “Come on. There’s a little wine left over. Let’s build a raft and enjoy the ride.”
After dealing with the dishes, Kari allowed Rob to tow her away from the mess and return to the living room, glasses of wine in hand. They sank to the couch and Rob kicked off his shoes, turning to sit sideways and pulling Kari against his chest. She leaned, letting his body heat soak into the tense muscles of her back.
“Tell me what’s bugging you.” He set his wineglass down on the coffee table and pressed his thumbs into the base of her neck, rubbing in slow, tiny circles.
“You keep doing that and I’m going to lose any ability to speak at all,” she said.
“Do your best.”
Kari took a breath, then another. The muscles in her shoulders and neck eased a little. “It’s just…I’m used to having a small, orderly life. I’m good at that. An expert, in fact.”
Rob found a knot a little lower on her back and dug into it. “How so?”
She hissed at the pressure, then dropped her head, succumbing to the massage. The knot softened. “I had a job and an apartment and a car. That was it.”
“And now you have a job and a house and a car.”
“And a new relationship and a niece who inherited a farm that had belonged to our family.”
“The relationship I can see would be a pain. I mean, I’ve met the guy. He’s a pushy, noisy jackass. Completely beyond the pale. But the rest of it?”
She brought her head up, rocked it side to side, laughing softly, and he stroked his thumbs down the long muscles in the back of her neck. Her breath shuddered in her back, supported by his chest. “Sam’s all the family I have.”
“Is it just occurring to you that everything seems to be okay with Sam?” His voice was soft, gentle. As if he didn’t want to spook her.
“It’s just occurring to me that I nearly screwed everything up again with my snit about selling Litengård.”
The stroking, probing fingers stilled, then resumed their soothing massage. “What’s your connection with the farm?”
“Hardly any. But Mor used to tell me stories when I was a little kid.”
“Stories? Like fairy tales?”
Kari closed her eyes and let a dreamy smile float across her face. “Pretty much. They did start with ‘Once upon a time…’ Mor would tell me about the cattle they had, the kitchen garden with its vegetables in the summer, the long winter nights when the family would sit and make things in the candlelight.”
“It sounds idyllic,” Rob said.
“It sounded very hygge.” Kari’s brain was fuzzy now, drifting with the fatigue of a tense, emotional evening and the soothing of Rob’s hands.
“More Swedish Chef-speak?” Rob teased, and she could hear the smile in his voice.
“It means…cozy. But more than cozy. I’m not sure I could explain it properly even if I had more than a smattering of Norwegian. It has to do with companionship and creating a congenial space and…” She spread her hands, running out of ways to describe a concept she had only the most tenuous grasp on herself.
“Sounds like what you’re trying to create here in this house.”
Kari’s eyes flew open and the fuzziness vanished as the truth of his statement struck her. “You’re right. That’s part of the reason why I’ve always wanted a home of my own. You can really make it yours. You can’t paint an entire wall, let alone do that in most rentals.” She pointed at the motif over the entrance to the dining room. “And if you can, you know you’re going to be moving on eventually. That kind of impermanence made me not want to put the effort in to make a space truly hygge in the way I want to.”
“Is this…hygge,” Rob said, the swooping Norwegian vowels going flat in his mouth, “something you can do in a ‘small, orderly life’ that doesn’t include more people? It seems to me that you need people to accomplish it. It seems like you might have gotten there this evening, in fact.”
Rob felt the moment when Kari’s breath arrested, her back stiffening against his chest. Had he overstepped something, or hit the nail on the head?
“How often are you alone, Kari?”
“A lot,” she said, her voice small.
“And yet you seem like someone who naturally loves to have people around. You created a beautiful dinner tonight. You made a lovely evening for Sam and Gray. And me.”
She let her head rock back and rest on his shoulder. He transferred his massage to her scalp, fingers threading through her fine hair, and she groaned. “You say that even after my gaffe?” she asked.
He refrained from shrugging, not wanting to disturb her. “We hadn’t talked about how open we were going to be with them yet. You were being cautious and I was being an asshole because my blood sugar was low and I have impulse control issues.”
“You’re being generous.”
“No, it’s true. I had my daughter in my head berating be for letting what she calls ‘hangry’ get away from me. But I’m trying. Will you let me?”
She took in a deep breath. It shuddered a little in her chest. “I’ll try to.”
Rob retraced the thread of their conversation. All roads seemed to lead back to Litengård. “So the farm was a fairy tale to you.” He could imagine that fairy tale, with her as the heroine, sitting in a Norwegian farmhouse, her pale skin and hair made luminous by candlelight as she knitted something. It was a beautiful image.
Kari nodded, her head rocking against his collarbone. “For a while. Then the stories dried up. I’d ask Mor to tell me more about it and…she’d wave a hand and say, ‘Forget about it. It’s gone. We’re Americans now.’ I think now she realized I was idealizing it and she wanted me to be more realistic.”
“Or maybe she had hoped the farm would be restored to her family somehow and then lost that hope.”
“I don’t know how. When she was so sick and told me about her first husband—well, her only husband—she told me she’d written to the Johannasens to notify them of Einar’s death, and then again to let them know about Bjorn’s birth. That’s probably how Sam’s great-uncle knew to look for her. But now I wonder if she wanted to shame them into returning Litengård to her family. ‘Look! There’s an heir! A boy child to work the land and make you proud!’” Her voice went flat and bitter at this last.
“You think your mother didn’t value you as a daughter?” The words caught at his throat, made him want to bite.
She shook her head. “No, I think the Johannasens didn’t value her. She basically sold herself to them. She married their faithless Einar and he betrayed her. They all did. And then Einar brought her here. A place she never wanted to be. We cremated her, you know.” She said this like it was something that should mean something to him.
“Yes?”
“Sam and I scattered her ashes in the Atlantic on the Eastern Shore. She told me she wanted to swim back to Norway. She never wanted to be here.”
Rob’s fingers flexed on Kari’s shoulders. “But it sounds like she made a good life here for you. She found love. She raised children she loved.”
“But she always thought of Litengård.”
“And now Sam’s letting it go.”
She nodded. “And Sam should let it go. I’m glad she didn’t get the same stories that I did. She doesn’t have the same fairy tale feeling about it. And she shouldn’t. It’s not paradise. It’s a rugged farm in a cold, harsh country, far from everything she’s ever known. Even if she moved to Norway to run it—I can’t even finish that sentence. She has no idea how to run a farm. Neither do I. The idea of either of us trying to take it on is ludicrous. We don’t even speak Norwegian.”
Kari’s natural practicality reasserting itself was both reassuring and heartbreaking. She was letting go of a real-life fairy tale in front of his eyes. Rob wrapped his arms around her, resting his cheek against hers, inhaling the light scent of her shampoo, the warmth of her skin.
“Would I be a benefit or a burden in your bed tonight?” he asked.
Kari’s eyes fluttered closed. “Benefit. Oh, please be a benefit.”
“I’m on it.”