A flicker of guilt caught Emil unaware, and he sat back in his seat. Desperate was not in his father’s vocabulary. “Then tell me,” he said grudgingly.
Olof leaned back in his chair with a sigh, dragging a ledger toward him. “There’s a backlog of invoices from the fall orders. I’ve done what I can, but without sharper eyes…” His gaze flicked meaningfully to Emil. “Our client vetting process has unraveled since Jensen left. The Port Authority is stonewalling me again, though perhaps they’d take you more seriously. And rent on the dry dock has risen thirty percent. Every day I spend fighting paperwork is a day stolen from the company’s future. Your family’s future.”
Emil’s chest tightened with a familiar suffocation only Olof could induce. “That’s not a short-term favor, Far. That’s a full-time job.”
“I know. And I wouldn’t ask if I had any other choice.”
“What you want is to trap me here. Bury me in this office so deep I forget what I wanted for myself.”
“That’s not true?—”
“Isn’t it?” Emil’s voice cracked, emotion surging up. “Every time I try to breathe on my own, you pull me back. I’m not a boy anymore. I have a life, a career that matters to me.”
“You call it a career. I call it chasing shadows.” Olof shook his head. “All that talent and fire poured into other people’s troubles. Never your own blood.”
Emil’s blood simmered. “Chasing shadows? That’s what you think about my job?”
Olof stared at him, and for a moment, his expression shifted. Not softer, exactly, but less sure. Less like the father Emil knew him to be. Then it was gone. It rattled Emil more than he cared to admit. But he wouldn’t budge. He couldn’t budge. If he did, he’d never control the reins of his life again.
“I need some air,” he muttered.
“Take your air,” Olof said, eyes dropping to the ledger. “I forget sometimes that not everyone feels the same weight of this family as I do.”
Emil stared at his father’s bent head, his chest tight with emotions he couldn’t name, until he could no longer stand it. He turned and strode from the room.
Just once it would be nice to come out of one of these conversations unscathed.
“Hammer. Now.”
Emil’s older brother, Pete, took one glance at him, then handed him a mallet without so much as a word. Merely pointed at a warped slab of pine leaning against the wall, then turned back to continue sanding the one-man scull on the worktable. At least one Anderson family member could be counted on for silence.
Emil crossed the shop in three strides, lifted the mallet in both hands, and brought it down hard. The slab splintered under the first blow. He hit it again. And again. Wood chips flew as he worked through his anger, his frustration. His disappointment. He wasn’t sure what burned more, his father’s arrogance or that brief flash of vulnerability buried beneath it. A crack in the armor that made Emil hesitate. That made him feel…what? Guilt?
Damn him for that.
By the time the slab was little more than a pile of kindling, Emil’s breath came in short, angry bursts. He let the mallet clatter to the ground and leaned forward, hands braced on his knees.
“Time for kaffekalas?” he asked, panting.
Pete grunted in assent and sat up on his stool, wincing slightly as he rubbed the small of his back. A telltale sign he’d been at it for hours. Emil had never understood how his brother could do the same thing day in, day out—planing wood, measuring, nailing, filing—until whatever he was working on emerged as near to perfect as human hands could make it. But Pete not only took pride in it, he thrived on it. As they’d grown older, Emil had learned not to begrudge him for being the son he couldn’t be.
“Far being a prick again?”
Emil’s lips twitched. It helped that Pete was loyal.
“Always.” He crossed to the scull and ran a hand over the sleek edge. “What a beaut. She for sale?”
Pete contemplated the scull while he rubbed his hands on a towel. He folded the towel in three precise motions, then set it on his worktable. “Not sure yet,” he said finally. “Might keep her.”
“I can see why. If not, I’ll buy her.”
“Aren’t you unemployed?”
“Don’t you start on me, too,” he warned, throwing a light punch to Pete’s biceps. “I have a plan.”
Pete only grunted, but Emil didn’t mind. It was an old family joke that Astrid had stolen Pete’s share of words at birth and never returned them.
“Let’s get to the table before Astrid’s piano lesson ends. I want to be there when Olive meets Far.”
