“They’d been trying for a family for years. Jonas and I actually had an older brother, Lars. He died when he was a baby.”
“Oh, that’s so sad!” Could this be the family tragedy Peggy had referred to?
“It was a crib death, nothing anyone could have done. But it took my mom a long time to get pregnant with Lars andthen again with Jonas. Ma said they were surprised when I came along only two years after him.”
“Do you have any photos of Lars?”
“There’s one in the living room at the farmhouse, and Ma has others. She still visits his grave often. He’s buried in the graveyard, beyond the lake.”
“You have a family graveyard?”
“Yes, behind the bushes, over on the left.”
“Are all your ancestors there?”
“Only the ones who lived and died on the farm.”
“That must make it even harder to let the farm go.”
The thought of the bones of his ancestors lying deep under the earth on their land—they tie him and his family to their place forever.
Then again, that would be the case whether or not they own the farm. They will always have history there. The Fredrickson farm will always be their family legacy.
We reach Wetherill and Anders nods up at the house. “Which is your room?”
“The one with the two dormers at the end.” I point at the upper level.
It’s funny, it reallydoesfeel like my room. The guest room at Bloomington never did. It hosted a gazillion other guests and visiting university lecturers and was so sterile compared to Bailey’s room, which was kept exactly as she left it, complete with her childhood toys, including a doll’s house that I coveted.
No one else has ever stayed in my room here aside from me. I know that won’t always be the case—it is a guest room, after all—but I suspect I’ll always feel at home here.
“Sometimes I see you and Jonas when you’re out in thefields,” I tell Anders. “It distracts me from work, which is a good thing.”
“I’m sorry you’re not enjoying your job much at the moment.”
“It’s okay.” I’m touched by the concern in his voice. “At least I got to stay in America for longer. And I’ve been feeling more inspired lately, so that’s good.” I nod ahead at the track, to prompt him to keep walking. “I said I’d come with you.”
“You haven’t sobered up, then?” He looks down at me with a small smile.
We’re still standing side by side and I’m soaking up the warmth of his body heat, the feeling of his soft shirt pressed against my bare arm.
“I’m fine, actually.” I smile back up at him.God, he’s lovely. “I’m not ready to call it a night yet. It’s too nice out here.”
The stars are pinpricks of light in black velvet and the air is cooler than it’s been, the humidity sliding away as we come into autumn. The weather forecast said we’d have rain this week, but right now there’s not a single cloud to be found in the sky.
“Do you sketch much for work?” Anders asks me, his boots scuffing the dirt on the track as we walk. We’re no longer touching, but I still feel close to him.
“No, everything’s done on a computer. I used to do sketch perspectives at my old practice, though.”
I was quite in demand for them, actually. Sometimes clients struggled to visualize the final design, so I’d sketch it out in 3D and color it up, but I did it freehand, so it looked more like a piece of artwork than a standard computer visualization. Clients loved them, which, in turn, made my boss, Marie, happy.
“You have a flair for this,” I remember her saying.
She’s French and had lived in the UK for something likethirty years, but her accent was still thick. “No one else can do them like you.”
I liked working with Marie. She was in her late sixties, but showed no signs of wanting to retire.
An idea comes to me and I wonder... If she’s still running a practice, would she be interested in my perspective sketches on a freelance basis? All I’d need is photographs of the existing buildings and plans.
