“Go on then,” his father prompted, interrupting Jiro’s thoughts.“Tell me about this lawyer.”So Jiro put away the images of a very special woman and tried to concentrate as he pulled up his email on his phone.
This was his life for now; he just needed to accept it.Without regrets or recriminations.He had to get his father through this Christmas with as much cheer as possible, so he couldn’t allow thoughts of Aurora to get him down.He decided he needed to be more present, and just put her out of his mind once and for all.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SIX MONTHS LATER
Aurora yawned, closed the morning newspaper, and put down her empty coffee mug.She was still in her pajamas, but knew she should get changed and perhaps take a wander down to the lakeside, just to get out and about.However, a more enticing thought was that maybe she should just stay inside and enjoy her day off.All this newfound freedom was a little disorienting, something Aurora would have to get used to again.Yesterday had been a harrowing day, and she was still emotionally exhausted from the whole thing.But staying in her pajamas all day wasn’t a good idea, especially because it was Saturday with midsummer in full swing outside, and she should go out and celebrate some of the pleasures she’d missed out on recently.Yep, she would get dressed.
As she walked past the mudroom door on her way to climb the stairs to her bedroom, her gaze caught on the two pairs of snowshoes still hanging on a rack on the wall.She should have put those away in the storage shed months ago.But something had stopped her.One pair were hers, but the others were her father’s; the ones she had lent to Jiro on the day they’d walked out onto the frozen lake.Sudden realization dawned upon her.Surely she couldn’t be that sad person who was leaving them there as a reminder that Jiro had been real?That she hadn’t just imagined him.She stopped in her tracks and huffed out a frustrated breath.Right, that was it.The snowshoes were going back in the shed right now, and that would be the end of her foolish mooning after a man who probably barely remembered her.
Snatching the shoes off the wall and shoving them under her arm, she marched straight through the kitchen to the back door, grabbing a key off a hook under the countertop, then heading out to the small shed at the rear of the garden.A beautiful, warm sun beat down on her bare shoulders from above, and a sudden, unexpected yearning hit her.A desire to show Jiro what this place looked like in the summer.So green and lush, and so completely different from the white world he’d encountered.He would love it; she just knew it.
She stopped walking and stomped her feet on the concrete pathway.Why was she continuing to do this to herself?She thought she would be over him by now.Funnily enough, Jiro was still in her thoughts, even after six months had passed since he and his father had left Sweden.She’d never even got to say goodbye.But that was for the best, and it was the way she’d wanted it; not allowing herself to go near the hospital until she knew the Nashimoris had left town.When she’d seen Jiro with his father in the hospital room that night, the realization had begun to dawn on her.Jiro had a duty to Kenichi, just as she had a duty to Karl.If anything, Jiro took that duty even more seriously than she did.He would not stay just for her, and she decided she wouldn’t ask him to do so.It wouldn’t be fair.So she’d managed to avoid him for days, asking Mårten not to put through any calls from him at work, until he got the message and left, even though her heart felt like a lead block inside her chest the whole time.And the pain hadn’t subsided one bit, even after all these months.
The only person she’d talked to about her feelings surrounding Jiro was Mårten’s fiancé.Summer had laughed at her confusion, telling her, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what that pain meant.She’d fallen in love with Jiro.Aurora had shaken her head and raised a wry smile for Summer’s benefit, telling her that nothing could be farther from the truth.How could she be falling in love with someone she’d only known for three days?Summer hadn’t let it go, however, and continued to encourage her to contact him; she was a strong believer in love at first sight, just look at how she and Mårten had got together.Secretly, Aurora had contemplated it.But in the end she’d been a coward, deciding that her pain would fade eventually, and that he was too busy with his own life back in America to care much about a girl he barely knew back in the wilds of Sweden.
Just once she’d fantasized about what she would’ve said to Jiro if things had been different.What if Jiro had told her that he loved her before he left?What if he’d asked her to wait for him?Would that have changed anything?She could just imagine the conversation in her head.Her reply would’ve been something like, “I’m in love with you too.”But that would’ve been where the fantasy ended.Because then she would have to say, “But I don’t know what to do with that feeling.I’m in an impossible situation.My life is taken up with caring for a man who is the bane of my life.I don’t have the bandwidth to carry out a relationship.And I don’t have the time to devote to a love affair.I don’t have the time that you deserve.It’s impossible for me to leave to move to a different country, so what’s the point.”
He would’ve understood that, of course he would, because he was in very similar circumstances.But would he have argued?Would he have fought for her, nonetheless?Would he perhaps have suggested he could come to Sweden instead?She would never know because it was all just one big fantasy.And for the past six months she’d tried to push it all as far back in her mind as she could as she dealt with the everyday complications of caring for her father, who once he came out of hospital, needed daily rehab sessions, and had become increasingly difficult to deal with.
But now, all of a sudden, she did have time on her hands.
Yesterday, she and Astrid had moved their father into a care facility.
It’d been Astrid who’d finally convinced Aurora that she couldn’t continue to live the way she was.Astrid had stayed with Aurora for a week after Karl’s fall.Together they spent time with Karl every day in hospital, and it hadn’t taken long for Astrid to work out how abominably he treated Aurora.After the fourth day, when Karl still refused to even acknowledge Aurora while she was in the room, let alone speak to her, Astrid sat her down at her kitchen table as soon as they got home.
“Why do you put up with him?”she’d asked.
Aurora had stared at her sister for many long moments, wondering how best to answer that question.
“Because he has no one else.Because it’s my duty as the oldest daughter.Because he asked me to,” she’d replied, trying to keep the defensiveness out of her voice.They were all valid reasons, and each one swirled through her head on regular rotation.She didn’t mention that it was also guilt that made her stay.Guilt mostly engineered by her father, but guilt was a very strong motivator.
“Yes, I get all that.But he has no right to treat you that way.”Astrid laid her hand over Aurora’s on the tabletop.“Look, I know he wasn’t the best father when we were young.And I guess I did a good job of trying to block it out most of the time.I know now that you took the brunt of his bad temper, and I know I let you, which I’m not proud of.”
Aurora opened her mouth to speak, but Astrid held up her hand.
“Let me finish,” she implored.“But at least when mother was around, she seemed to soften his bad moods.It was only after Mother died that I really began to understand what an awful man he was.Which is why I was happy when you moved to Gothenburg.I didn’t say it to your face, but I understood you were escaping.”
That made Aurora sit back and take another look at Astrid.Her sister hadn’t been totally oblivious to all of her pain after all.Aurora wasn’t sure if she was happy with this revelation or not.After all, she’d done everything in her power to shield Astrid.But perhaps her façade hadn’t worked as well as she thought.
“You can’t keep putting your life on hold just to care for a narcissistic, ignorant old man.I know he’s our father, but you deserve so much better,” Astrid added, when Aurora still didn’t speak.
Aurora didn’t want to admit that she’d been having the same thoughts recently, and so she squirmed in her chair.“But what is the other option?”she asked eventually.“Do we get a full-time nurse?I don’t think I can afford that.”
“No, because that doesn’t really solve the problem.He’s still here, living in your house, still injecting his poison into your life.”This was the most candid conversation Aurora had had with Astrid in probably forever, and she felt a little shamefaced that she’d believed Astrid to be totally impervious to everything that was going on up here.But could Aurora begin to entertain the idea of finally getting her father the care he needed?Because that would give her back her freedom, but it’d come at the cost of her father’s misery; she knew he’d hate to be put in a home with a vengeance.
“Let me be the bad guy this time,” Astrid said, locking her gaze with Aurora’s.“There’re plenty of care homes both here and in Malmö we could start looking at.He talks to me, he’ll listen to me.I know he won’t like it, and might try to shut me out as well, but he needs to hear this.”That Astrid was now prepared to take some of the burden onto her shoulders made a lump form in Aurora’s throat.
The conversation had shaken her to the core and given her a lot to think about.But with Karl in the hospital, it was no time to start talking about what might happen in the future.So she’d asked Astrid to leave it for now.Before his fall, Aurora would never have even considered moving Karl to a care home; he wouldn’t have stood for it, and she wouldn’t have had the capacity to fight back.But with Astrid in her corner… she began to have a little hope.
Her younger sister had gone home to Malmö, and Aurora thought she might not see her again anytime soon.But Astrid had returned every month or so since then to see how things were going.Checking in on Aurora as much as she did on her father.She was the barometer for Aurora’s emotions, because Aurora was so caught up in caring for Karl, she was too close to see how he was affecting her.And Astrid could see Aurora was starting to suffer, was being dragged down by the constant stress and the duties that were pulling her in every direction.
Astrid finally went to speak to Mårten, recruiting him to her cause.Mårten had already commented once or twice to Aurora that he was worried about her—she was often late to shift because she had to take her father to rehab sessions, and she was always late with her paperwork now, which’d been unheard of before.Her perfect standards were slipping at work, and while it killed her inside that she might lose the job she loved, she couldn’t bring herself to ask anyone for help.Karl had alienated Millie to the point that the poor old lady felt incredibly sorry for Aurora, but even she had stopped coming around in the evenings to help out.
Astrid, Mårten, and Millie had all descended on her house one Saturday morning and said they were holding an intervention, whether she liked it or not.Karl had been home too, and they told her they purposely wanted him included in the conversation, just so he knew how much he was hurting her.He seemed not to care, however; he’d ranted and shouted, swearing that he’d rather be dead than live in some stinking, shitty care home.It was Karl’s frenzied reaction—and his complete lack of concern for Aurora’s life that was in a downward spiral—more than Astrid and Mårten’s determined, compassionate faces that’d forced her to see what was really going on.She’d never forget the stony look on her father’s face when she’d finally agreed they should start looking for somewhere else for Karl to live.He’d refused to participate in the conversation after that, even calling Astrid a traitor, just as bad as her sister.But both sisters stood shoulder to shoulder facing their father and told him this was the way things were going to be from now on.
Then, yesterday, an ambulance had come to move Karl to his new assisted care home.Her father had refused to speak and remained as stony and implacable as a statue as the paramedics helped him into the back of the van.Aurora had almost changed her mind then, but Astrid had taken hold of her hand and together they’d watched as Karl was driven away.
