Page 144 of Top Shelf

“Your crown has a weak left side.”

The sheer audacity of this man.

I look down at the crooked little wreath in front of me. “I’d like privacy during this learning curve. Don’t look at my masterpiece before it’s done.”

Alice leans over my arm and inspects it with devastating seriousness. “It is better if you put the blue ones here.”

“Thank you. Finally, some professional support.”

Vera, kneeling on the bench beside me, immediately steals two cornflowers from Viktor’s pile and places them in mine. “Blåklint for Heidi.”

“For me?” I ask.

I turn one in my fingers, recognition arriving a moment later.

“Ohh!” I glance across the table at Viktor. “Your favorite flower, Karlsson.”

His eyes flick up to mine, and there’s a small pause. “You remembered.”

“Please,” I scoff. “You told me approximately thirty seconds before I married you.”

His mouth shifts at the corner, but Vera is already nodding beside me.

“Blue is good for weddings.”

Viktor’s hands still on his own crown. It’s not much, really, just a small pause in the stems he’s holding, but apparently my nervous system has decided to specialize in Viktor, even the smallest of details.

“Is it?” I ask softly.

“For something blue,” Astrid calls from the kitchen doorway, carrying a bowl of strawberries against her hip.

“And because it is stubborn,” Freja adds. “It grows where it likes.”

My attention drops to the flower between my hands and the ring twinkling on my finger.

Blåklint.

I can see the courthouse again with ridiculous clarity. Viktor standing in front of me while I fired a million questions at him while panicking that I barely knew him.

Favorite food. Favorite color. Favorite flower.

And out of every answer he could have chosen, he said Blåklint. He stood there about to become my husband and gave me an answer knowing exactly what it meant.

Ebba, seated in the shade with her cup of coffee and the authority of a retired queen, sniffs. “Romantic people say it means loyalty. Fidelity.”

I glance at Viktor to see his gaze on the flower in my hand now. My fingers close around the blue petals, highlighting the ring sparkling against my skin.

“You knew,” I say softly.

“Yes,” he murmurs.

One word, and my chest flips ridiculously beneath my ribs. It’s been happening since breakfast, catching me with tiny little details each time this family slips another piece of themselves into my hands.

Astrid pressing a plate into my hands before I realize I’m hungry. Anders showing me where the best morning light falls across the lake. Hugo slipping his wooden fox into my tote bag “for protection.” Freja telling me I’m folding napkins wrong, then quietly moving mine to the top of the pile anyway. Ebba catching every glance and touch between Viktor and I without ever making me feel like I have something to prove.

And Viktor telling me his favorite flower on our wedding day while knowing it means loyalty and fidelity and romance.

No one here makes a grand production of including me—they simply keep making room. A grand production would be easier to resist. To remember it’s for the act. I could smile through it, manage it, and file it away as kindness with a beginning and an end.