Page 152 of Top Shelf

Her lips tremble into the smallest smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who pays such close attention to the things they love,” she whispers, fingers tightening against mine. “But I know it’s one of my favorite things about you.”

Nobody speaks, the only sounds are from the crickets in the meadow and the lapping of the lake. But Hugo saves us both.

“Kiss!”

The whole family breaks into laughter. Heidi startles, and I close my eyes while Freja catches Hugo too late and Mamma says his name in scandalized Swedish. Ebba waves her hand as though the child has made a perfectly practical suggestion.

I look at Heidi, and her mouth curves slowly.

“Well?” she whispers. “You gonna kiss your wife or not, husband?”

My mouth lowers to hers, and I kiss Dr. Heidi Grant in the middle of my home, with the birds chirping and the bees buzzing and my family in various states of joyful laughter and applause.

I mean to keep it gentle, but I do not fully succeed. She brings our ribboned hands to my chest, and my thumb presses against her pulse. The ribbon shifts between us, soft and symbolic and suddenly not harmless at all. She tastes like strawberries, and when I lift my head, her eyes are wide enough that I know she felt it too.

Something sacred has happened here, even if neither of us is brave enough yet to admit it.

Afterward, there is food, because in my family, all strong feelings must be immediately fed. Pappa pours aquavit and kisses my mother’s temple when she pretends to scold him for giving me too much. Anton stays quiet for most of it, but when Clara compliments Heidi’s ring, he looks at it for a long moment and says it suits her.

Then the music starts. At first, it is folk music from the old speakers Johan set up near the terrace. The children drag Heidi toward the grass and make her turn in clumsy circles until she is laughing and flushed, her crown tilted and flowers sliding from her hair. She looks over at me, and I feel it like a hand closed around my heart.

Later, when the light begins to soften, and the air turns cooler, my father changes the music.

I hear the first bright notes and go still. Across the grass, my mother turns toward him, and for a second, she is not Mamma with flour on her sleeve and a dozen opinions about candle placement. She is younger. A girl I never knew, hearing a song that must have once opened a door inside her.

Joyride by Roxette blares through the old speakers and into the garden.

Heidi’s head snaps to mine, recognition moving over her face followed by a softness when she sees my mother laugh and wipe under her eye. Pappa says nothing. He only holds out his hand and sings the opening lines to her.

Mamma takes it, and I watch them step into the grass together, my quiet father and my spirited, eccentric mother. For years, I thought he endured her because he was steady and she was not, and that is what steady men did. Held the door, carried the bags. Smiled when the woman they loved became too much for the room.

I was wrong. He is looking at her as if there has never been a room without her in it. As if all his quiet was never tolerance, only a place he built around her so she could be exactly as she was.

My throat tightens as Heidi comes to stand beside me. “Why this song?”

“It is my parents’ wedding song.” I watch Pappa turn Mamma carefully beneath the soft evening sky, his hand sure at her waist. “It was everywhere when I was a child. Mamma played it when she was happy, and Pappa pretended to complain.”

“Pretended?”

I look at at the way his face changes when my mother laughs, impossibly in love.

“Yes,” I say. “Pretended.”

Heidi is quiet for a moment before she nudges me. “So every time you’ve been blasting Roxette on Priscilla—”

“I do not blast it. I play it at an appropriate volume.”

Her laugh brushes through me, then she looks back toward my parents. “You know, for someone who grew up watching that, you’ve always been pretty anti-marriage.”

“Mm, I was never against what they have.” I meet her gaze. “I just never believed the paper was what made it real. If Mamma and Pappa had never signed anything, he would still look at her exactly like that.”

Heidi watches my face. “So you didn’t see the point.”

“Partly.” I turn and watch my father lean down while Mamma murmurs into his ear, grinning before he kisses her temple. “But mostly because they got it very right.”

“Yeah.” Heidi’s fingers move against mine. “They did.”

“So I think I was afraid I would get it wrong.”