Louise felt dizzy when she walked out of the house. Eik stood smoking a cigarette, enjoying the view of the forest. She asked him to unlock the car, and just as she was about to get in, Charlie jumped up right behind the front seat. He looked at her and cocked his ears forward, as if in anticipation.
“You’ll just have to wait to get out and run,” she snapped. She was still enraged. She’d let the man provoke her. She shouldn’t have reacted when he mentioned René.
“Damn it,” she said under her breath. She vowed that from now on she would be better prepared.
Eik walked over to her. “What are you mumbling about?”
“Nothing,” she said. “You were good in there. I’m sorry; it threw me off to see it was Jane lying in bed. We knew each other.”
Eik put his arm around her. “I figured it was something like that.” He kissed her hair.
* * *
Images from the past kept popping up now, after seeing Jane. Happy images. Despite her anger, Louise could suddenly recall what it was like being an eighth-grader in love.
She had been crazy about Klaus. She’d stood by the outdoor handball court in every kind of weather to watch him play. She’d hung out in the gym’s clubhouse, just to see him walk out of the locker room.
It all seemed so ridiculous now, but back then it had been a matter of life or death. Teenage love had been a force she couldn’t control, no matter how hard she tried. She could still remember her heart jumping when he looked at her and smiled.
They started going together after a party in the gym. Maybe she’d been drunker than she thought when she walked over to him. And it had felt like the most natural thing in the world when Klaus put his arm around her and whispered in her ear, “Finally.”
* * *
Eik backed out of the courtyard and drove down the bumpy gravel road, out to the highway. “You want to go out to eat tonight? Jonas is welcome to come along, of course. We could go to Tea; they make the best Peking duck in town.”
She smiled and said that Jonas was going to a movie with a friend and would be staying all night with him afterward.
Eik grinned. “It’s not like I have anything against it being just the two of us.” He leaned toward her. “We can have coffee at your place afterward.”
She touched his cheek, felt the stubble grazing against the palm of her hand.
“There’s something I have to do first,” she said. She told him to turn right before they reached the roundabout.
“There’s no hurry, it’s only five.”
“This is something I have to do alone.”
She pointed at a side street ahead. “Would you please drop me off there?”
Eik’s expression became serious. When they reached the street, he stopped and turned to her. “Are you sure this is wise?”
She saw the doubt in his face. He couldn’t possibly know where she was going, but he wasn’t dumb; she’d told him about losing a man she’d loved. She touched his cheek again and nodded.
“I haven’t spoken with Klaus’s parents since he died, and now I have to. They deserve to know what René Gamst told me. If their son didn’t commit suicide, they should know. But going out to eat Peking duck tomorrow or this weekend sounds fantastic.”
She loved the thin pancakes and the pungent hoisin sauce. It was one of Jonas’s favorite foods, something he and his father had made together. Jonas had diced the cucumbers and spring onions; his father had been an expert at the crisp skin. Suddenly Louise missed her foster son terribly. His relaxed face, the thick, dark hair that fell into his eyes.
“Of course,” Eik said, jolting her out of her thoughts, the chaos of emotions from the past and present bouncing around inside her. All the things she had pushed away, repressed.
She didn’t even know if Lissy and Ernst still lived in the white house on Skovvej. Back in the eighth grade, Louise always bicycled past as slowly as possible on the way to Lerbjerg, to see if Klaus’s scooter was parked in the drive, or if he was helping his father behind the house.
She studied Eik’s face in profile for a moment before getting out of the car. She shook her head when he asked if he should wait for her.
“I’ll take the train home,” she said, and smiled at him.
“Shouldn’t we check to see if they still live here?”
“I have to do this alone,” she repeated. She was beginning to wonder herself if this was such a good idea.
Eik watched her a moment, then nodded and blew her a kiss.
She stood on the corner as he made a U-turn and drove off toward Copenhagen.