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He was talking again, the words were disjointed, but she caught one: seizure. She felt so tired. Her eyes lifted to the contents on the bed. Her mind retreated, but her stare remained fixed on the shoe box.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Mora, Minnesota

Analise

Ahandsome and mysterious stranger entered Mora Café and Bakery. In rural central Minnesota, Mora hovered at a population of three thousand, making it easy to mark an outsider. Not just any outsider. He reeked of the Twin Cities: blue dress shirt with unbuttoned rolled cuffs, pressed gray chinos, and a sleek watch.

At first, Analise hadn’t glanced to the door from her station behind the café’s counter. Routine had trained her who to expect, when, and on what day. It was Monday. Oscar and Liam, retired policemen, had been seated at the counter for senior citizen specials since 7:30 a.m., arguing politics and crossword answers. The Fabulous-Four teenage girls from Mora’s Secondary School, with their knock-off designer yoga pants, had arrived for machine-dispensed mochas before school at 7:45.

This was right before the members of the Moms’ Book Club gathered around their usual table next to the glass display of baked goods. In five years, Analise had yet to see the moms pop out a book. She counted the women when they came in. One missing. Must be her now. But silence fell over the establishment, and so Analise averted her eyes from Oscar’s coffee cup, where she mentally calculated the room he’d need for his cream.

The moment she saw the stranger though, she was thrown off, filling it to the brim.

It seemed everyone was sizing up the interloper. He was tall and blond like most Scandinavian folk of Mora, but, no, they didn’t seem to know him. His gaze skirted about with uncertainty. For having such a polished appearance, he did not seem self-assured.

Thankful to have the coffee pot to steady her shaky grip, Analise treaded over in her generic, squelching sneakers.

The stranger was busying himself, scanning coloring pages still taped on the café’s display wall from National Donut Day. Between the pages were Nordic memorabilia, framed photographs of the annual Vasaloppet USA, Minnesota’s largest cross-country ski race, vintage photos of the town’s Swedish relics: the giant Dala horse and Mora clock, the county courthouse, and an original 1943 photo of the husband-wife owners of Mora Café & Bakery.

When Analise and the stranger connected, his face blanched, eyes widened, and she noted the greenish hue and feminine-long eyelashes that framed them. His mouth unhinged as if she were either some sort of celebrity or a ghost left over from Halloween.

“Would you like to sit at the counter or—?” she started.

“Isa?” he gasped, though it seemed more like a choke. The name slid through her veins, solidifying her blood. Analise squinted her eyes. “Did . . . ? How would you . . . ?” She turned about as if someone could rescue her and explain how a complete stranger would know the nickname only her mother called her by. “Do I know you?”

The stranger’s razor-sharp stare tickled the nerves along her spine. She focused on the buttons of his shirt rising up and down, the spiked rhythm of his breaths. “I—I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry . . . ” He ran a distressed hand across his shorn hair and cursed to himself, almost tearfully. He covered his mouth and then lowered his hand. “You—you don’t know me?”

She started to form the word, No, but couldn’t complete it. Because clearly, she ought to. “Should I?”

“Yes! You seriously don’t —? It’s me,” he slammed a hand to his chest, “Taylor!” His eyes bore into hers as if testing her, asking, begging, Are you lying? But apparently seeing she was honest, because Analise was incapable of even a white lie, his countenance changed, as if he were going to completely combust. He spun and fled out the door, taking her breath with him.

Analise spun too and clunked the coffee pot onto the counter, mumbling to no one, “Be right back.”

The man—Taylor—was halfway to a silver Audi parked on the street.

“Wait!” she called out, and he stopped, planting his hands on his hips as if to find balance. He shut his eyes and lowered his face, drawing her gaze to his footwear. He wore neither loafers nor dress shoes as expected, but black Adidas with white stripes. The kind soccer players wore. Something about them was so achingly familiar. When she arrived tentatively at his side, he opened his eyes but cast them onto his shoes, as if the answers to life’s most pressing questions were written on them.

“Are you okay?” she asked gently.

He exhaled forcefully. His face softened when he raised it to her. He swiped a hand down it to clear the perspiration. The tiny beads glistened in the cold sunshine. “I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“Are you sure I’m the one who’s freaked out?” She immediately regretted her joking manner. But for some reason, the light exchange came effortlessly, and it set him at ease, relaxing his tense shoulders.

“I’m prone to panic attacks,” he said with a closed-mouth laugh.

Analise returned the smile, dying to ask him more questions, and so she coaxed him inside to stay. “Did you want some breakfast? We don’t have anything fancy.”

His look upon her was intense, saturated with what appeared to be a thousand questions as well, but he replied, “Sure,” and followed. Analise, feeling guilty at provoking in him such a dramatic reaction, said, “This isn’t something I share or talk about much, but I had a brain injury my senior year of high school. I’m fine now, but my memory took a little hit, so if I—if we⁠—”

Taylor opened the door to the café, saying, “I was surprised, that’s all. I recognized you from Wayzata High. We were in the same class. It’s okay, you don’t have to explain anything.”

Analise paused and studied him, not quite buying it, but he avoided her gaze, and she thanked him for holding the door.

He settled between Oscar and Liam. Analise overturned a coffee cup and readied to pour, but he covered it. “I don’t drink coffee.”

“Are you human?” growled Oscar.