“Indeed.” Then he looks at me quizzically. “What about you? Are you a parent?”
I smile. “No. Maybe someday. Although it seems like a hard job—especially the teenage years. I wasn’t exactly an easy child.”
“No? What were you like?”
It’s clear he has no idea that he raised me, but I go with it. “Well, as a little kid, I was inventive and exuberant and rambunctious. I loved animals and I wanted to be a veterinarian, and my father always encouraged me in that idea. I was very close with him. He taught me how to do everything.”
The two loons turn a large circle in the water, and as they swim back toward our dock, the male joins them. After a moment of preening, they increase their speed and glide past us as a threesome.
“But once I became a teenager, I was a little more ornery and wild.”
“Ha!” My father seems to appreciate these qualities.
“I thought I had life figured out, as teenagers do. But then there was an accident, and a friend of mine died. After that, my parents got divorced. I was very mean to my father, and we drifted apart. Then he got sick, and I still feel guilty for how absent I was.”
“Oh, dear. You should talk to him about it,” says my father.
I feel a tear slide down my cheek. “You’re right. I should, but after all this time, he may not be able to forgive me. He may not have the capacity.”
“Of course he does,” my father says with conviction. “I would have forgiven you long ago, if you were my child.”
Chapter 46
By the time I go to bed that night, Nina has been admitted to the hospital in Stockholm, but there is still no baby. I am buzzing with anticipation, but I tell myself I have to sleep. I send Max a text, promising to keep him updated, and then turn out the light. I lie in the dark, letting my senses adjust to the blackness. There is no moon tonight, and the loons are making a racket. I now know that they have multiple calls. There is the playful cackling that evokes a cocktail party. There is the agitated wail that sounds territorial. There is the gentle calling to locate a nearby mate or loonlet. And then there is the mournful, middle-of-the-night song—the one that feels like a meditation unto itself, otherworldly in its timbre. That’s the one that is in my ears as I drift into sleep.
I have the dream again. This is the third time, and it begins much the same way—with me coughing up my own heart and catching it in my hand. It thuds urgently, and when I look up, the crowd has thinned and Seth is standing right before me. I hold up my heart as rivulets of blood begin to trickle down my forearm. “Do I still need this?” I ask.
Seth crosses his arms and says, “You tell me.”
I jolt awake with a feeling that something has happened, and I paw around for my phone. There is a text from Nils:
He’s here! Everyone doing well. Call us when you can.
I FaceTime Nils and he doesn’t respond. Then I try my sister. No response, so I leave a message. I think about calling my mom, who must be there by now, but I’d rather hear the news from Nina. I tell myself to be patient and go downstairs, where I find my father rummaging around in the cabinets. He has completely emptied one, and its contents are all over the counters.
“Where do we keep the waffles?” he asks in frustration.
We haven’t made waffles since I moved back, but now that he mentions them, I’m in the mood as well.
“It’s okay, Dad,” I say, closing the cupboard to put a stop to his raid. “We don’t have waffles here, but I know where we can get some.”
We get dressed and head to Lorne’s for breakfast, where I try not to obsess about hearing back from Nina. She’s learning how to navigate a newborn, after all. We play tic-tac-toe as we wait for our waffles to arrive, and as I am contemplating my next move, a little girl walks up and pats my father’s elbow, smiles, and then runs off. A moment later, her mother comes up to us and says, “Sorry about that. She just wanted to touch your arm.”
“Very good,” says my father, affably.
As the family files out the door, I hear her explain to her little one, “Yes, that’s the oracle. But you should always ask before touching people…”
The fact that my father is a local celebrity never ceases to surprise me. He finds it amusing as well.
“What’s next, a paparazzo waiting on the curb?” He laughs as I pay our bill. It’s not as unlikely as he thinks, if we continue at our current clip.
We get in the car and drive the short distance to Deb’s to get some groceries. We could have walked, but my father’s hip has been bothering him more and more, and I do my best not to overexert him. Once inside, I head for the dairy aisle and my father browses the cereals. I am contemplating a pack of shredded cheese when my phone finally lights up with a FaceTime from Nils.
I answer the call and the screen fills with my sister’s bleary but beaming face. “Look who’s here!” she sings as the camera moves to aswaddled lump in her arms. The lights are low where they are, but I can make out the outline of a sleeping baby with squinched eyes and pouty lips.
I squeal from inside the door of the cheese refrigerator. “Nina, he’s magical! Do we have a name?”
“We do. Anders Arthur Gunnarsson.”
