by Holly Rayner
The door to the house opens before we’ve reached it. A woman stands there, dressed in a white sweater and a green skirt covered by a pale blue apron, her blond hair pulled back in a low ponytail. I know immediately that she must be Magnus’ mother. She looks exactly like her son.
She lets out a cry at the sight of him and runs down the path toward us, flinging her arms around him, and he lifts her bodily from the ground and spins her around before setting her down. She laughs once released and swats at him with her dishtowel.
“You bad boy,” she says, her accent much heavier than his. “You never come home anymore.”
“Sorry, Ma,” he says. “Work keeps me so busy. You know how it is. If I had my way, I’d be home every weekend. Who can resist your cooking?”
“You see how he tries to flatter me?” she says, addressing me, and I’m charmed at her easy inclusion of me in the conversation. It doesn’t feel awkward at all. “Hello, dear. I’m Hedda Johansen, Magnus’ mother. You must be Leah? We’ve heard quite a lot about you…lately, that is.” And she shoots a look at her son.
“I am,” I say. “And it’s so nice to meet you, Mrs. Johansen. Thank you for having me over this morning.”
“Call me Hedda, dear,” she replies in delightfully accented English. She turns, beckoning, and we follow her into the house. “Is this your first time in Oslo?”
“It is. My first time in Europe, actually.”
“Isn’t that something! Well, I’ve made a traditional Nordic breakfast for us. Eggs, stroopwafel—herring, of course. Magnus, why don’t you show Leah into the kitchen, and I’ll go and fetch your father. God knows that man wouldn’t come out of his study if it was on fire.” And she bustles off around the corner, presumably to find and produce Mr. Johansen.
Magnus laughs. “There you go,” he says. “Not really so terrifying, is she?”
“No,” I say. Meeting Hedda has done a lot to calm my nerves.
But I’m not any more excited about the prospect of lying to her. In fact, it seems even worse now. She’s such an open, friendly woman, and the idea that I’ve come here to deceive her is painful. I want to flee. But I can’t, of course. I’m in the middle of the Norwegian countryside. Where in the world am I going to go?
Hedda returns to the kitchen with a man trailing behind her. He’s tall too, lankier than Magnus, and he holds a newspaper folded across his finger. I get the feeling he and Hedda have been arguing about whether he should have to put it down.
Aside from his lanky build, Magnus’ father looks exactly like his son. His blond hair, although starting to gray, is still thick and styled in the same way as Magnus’ is. They have the same square chin and the same piercing blue eyes. Though he lacks the powerful muscles, he seems fit, like the kind of man who might be able to keep up in a race with his son.
“So this is her?” he asks, studying me up and down. “The American girl.”
“Arne!” Hedda scolds.
Magnus chimes in, “She has a name, Pa.”
Arne shows his hands as if declaring his own innocence. “What do I know about it?” he asks. “I see a newspaper article that tells me my own son is involved with a girl I’ve never heard of. Do I know if it’s true? Does he call me? No. Nothing. I assume it must be false, then, because why else would he not tell me? The newspaper must have made a mistake. And then he calls me last night to tell me he’s flown home in that infernal plane and that he’s bringing the American girl to meet us because he plans to marry her.”
I’m in shock. I’m practically shaking. Hedda seemed so kind, so welcoming. She was pleased to meet me, pleased to have me in her home. But Arne’s reaction seems just the opposite. Is he angry with Magnus? Is he angry with me?
“Pa, stop,” Magnus says. His voice is mirthful as he chides his father. “You’re scaring Leah. She doesn’t know about your sense of humor.” He turns to me. “My father mocks when he means to show affection, Leah. This is his way of welcoming me home. He’s making jokes at my expense, you see?”
Jokes?
I look back at Arne. Sure enough, his mouth is twitching up at the corners, and I realize with a wave of embarrassment that I’ve been had.
I chuckle, and Arne and Magnus join me in it, as the three of us quickly descend into raucous, mirthful laughter. It feels so good, like the tension is dissipating.
Just as we’re coming up for air, Hedda reappears and ushers us through to the dining room. Breakfast is laid out for us, and we all gather around and fill our plates. The salmon is incredible, the freshest I’ve ever tasted.
“So, were you able to clear up your immigration issues, Magnus?” Arne says. “I thought you laid a very convincing trail, personally.”
I almost choke on my fish. Magnus pauses to pat me on the back and pour me some fresh juice.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“They know?” I say. “They know our marriage is…I mean.”
I glance at his parents, not wanting to say it out loud until someone has confirmed that they do in fact know what’s going on.
“We guessed,” Hedda says apologetically. “It wasn’t that difficult. I’m sure you played your role very convincingly, Leah, but we do know our son. We expected he would do something like this when immigration came for him.”
“And then he called us yesterday and mentioned a woman he was going to marry, a woman we’d never heard of except as a rumor in the media,” Arne says. “If he’d truly had a girlfriend for the past five years, we would know about it. I suppose you thought you could pretend you’d just kept her from us?” he adds, spearing another piece of salmon. “This is why I always beat you at chess, Magnus. You were so busy coming up with clever strategies to outwit people, you never accounted for the fact that your opponent was thinking too.”
“This isn’t chess,” Magnus says, cheeks flushing.
“No, it isn’t. And you’ll need to be considerably more clever to pull it off than you would to win a game.”
I look from Hedda to Arne and back, a bit worried. I can’t tell what they’re thinking. I’m relieved that I won’t have to lie to them, and I can’t pretend otherwise, but at the same time, they do seem critical of his actions. Is this standard parental critiquing, or are they still hoping he’ll change his mind and make a different choice? Maybe they want him to come back and live in the house by the sea with the big glass wall. Maybe they want him to stop trying to immigrate. Or maybe they just see this as a stupid reason to get married.
Hedda must see the concern on my face because she pats my hand.
“It’s all right, dear,” she says. “Magnus is a grown man. We understand that he’s going to make his own choices. And you seem lovely. You’re very kind to help him, to travel here to meet us with him.”
“We’re friends,” I say quickly. I don’t want her to get the wrong impression, to think I’m being bought or something. Even though I kind of am. Lately, I’ve been trying not to think of Magnus’ sponsorship of my app as my price for marrying him. Instead, I’m thinking of it as a payment of the debt he owes me for stealing my Vipers’ Nest opportunity. I feel much more comfortable taking money from him for that.
The rest of the meal is pleasant and surprisingly warm. I expected to feel like I was at a job interview, like I was being examined to see if I measured up to the requirements for the post I was about to try to fill. But it doesn’t feel like that at all. It feels like I’m already family, like Magnus’ parents are simply happy to know me.
Hedda presses recipe after recipe on me every time I compliment her food, and Magnus laughs and says America doesn’t have anything to equal her cooking. Arne brings out a history book from his study and shows me pictures of Viking ships. They ask about my family, and I tell them about Gran and what the last few years with her were like. For the first time since she died, talking about her doesn’t feel like mourning. It feels like celebrating.
It’s not until we’re nearly done with breakfast, when I’m picking at my last str
oopwafel and trying to will myself to keep eating even though I’m not sure my stomach can take it, that I notice Hedda giving me funny looks.
The first time I see it, I glance down at my sweater to see if I’ve spilled something. But my clothes are clean. That’s not the problem. Now I’m confused and a little worried. Could this mean that my read of the success of this breakfast is off? Maybe she doesn’t like me after all. Maybe something has changed her mind.
I glance at Magnus, hoping his body language will give something away, but he doesn’t even seem to have noticed.
Hedda stands. “You all relax,” she says, beginning to gather our plates. “I’ll bring out more coffee. Who wants some? Magnus, I know you do. Arne? Yes? And Leah?”
“Hang on,” I say, jumping to my feet, sensing an opportunity. “Let me help you clear.”
“Nonsense. You’re a guest!”
“I know. Please let me. My grandmother would be embarrassed if I didn’t help out.”
“Oh, well, all right. We can’t let her down, I suppose,” Hedda says, smiling.
The two of us gather the dishes and bring them to the sink. There, as I was hoping, Hedda begins running a basin full of hot water, adding a bit of soap and soaking the dishes in it to scrub later. I seize the opportunity and lean in close.
“Is something wrong?” I ask her.
“Wrong?” She looks surprised. “I don’t think so. Was breakfast all right? Did you want me to make something else?”
I can tell she really means this. If I asked her to, she would make some bacon right now. That’s the kind of woman she is.
“No, breakfast was wonderful,” I say. “I just…”
Suddenly I feel foolish. I’m sure I’m imagining things. Am I really going to ask this kind, good-hearted woman why she looked at me weird? Of course not. I’m going to drop it.
“He likes you,” she says.
“What?”
“That’s what you were going to ask me, yes? You want to know whether Magnus’ feelings for you are real?” She smiles. “I’ve never seen him glow the way he does when he looks at you, Leah.”
“But our marriage…it’s fake.” I want to be sure she understands what she’s saying. “You know that, don’t you? He didn’t ask me to marry him because he feels in any way romantic about me. That’s not what this is.”
“Maybe,” Hedda agreed. “But whatever the reason he did it, the feelings are there now. A mother always knows.”
She gives me a wink and crosses back to the table leaving me clutching a dishrag and more confused than ever.
Chapter 18
Magnus
It takes us forever to get out the door after breakfast, of course. I think Ma would barricade me in the house if she thought she could get away with it. Not that I really blame her. I don’t relish leaving either. I like living in the States, but I don’t get to see my family nearly as often as I’d like.
Finally, we manage to extract ourselves and make our way down the flagstone path, each of us clutching a tin of stroopwafels Ma insisted we take with us.
“She doesn’t get to feed me much,” I say apologetically to Leah, who’s looking a bit overwhelmed.
“They’re wonderful,” she says in response.
I’m momentarily stunned. I know my parents are wonderful, of course, but would I have known it if I were meeting them today for the first time? But then, Leah has a way of seeing the truth about people. She cuts through the artifice immediately. I want to debrief her about the house, about my parents, to pull out the details of exactly what she saw there, but that would be a little creepy, probably.
“They liked you,” I say instead. “I knew they would, of course.”
This is a lie. I hoped they would, and there would have been an argument later if they hadn’t, but it wouldn’t have been the first time I’d introduced them to a friend they’d flatly disliked for no good reason that I could see. But I can tell they liked Leah by the way my mother kept trying to feed her and by the way my father showed off, dragging her into his study to look at all his books like a proud new parent.
Leah, for her part, exclaimed perfectly over everything she was fed and shown, and I could see my parents growing more and more pleased with themselves as the time went by. All in all, the day couldn’t have gone better.
But it’s not over yet.
I bundle Leah into the car quickly and pull back out onto the highway. The sun is still rising in the sky, glinting through the pines on the side of the mountain that looms ahead of us, and a fresh coat of snow lies over the peak.
Leah notices almost immediately that we’re going in the wrong direction.
“Wasn’t the house back that way?” she asks, looking behind us. “I thought we were driving toward that mountain on the way to see your parents. Or am I thinking of the wrong mountain?” She turns and looks behind her, scanning the horizon for other mountains she might have confused with the great one before us. “There aren’t any other mountains around here.”
“Well, there are,” I say, “but none that you can see from here. And you’re right, we did come from the other way. But we’re not going back to my house tonight.”
“We’re not?”
“I’m taking you up to the peak. We’re going to go skiing. You can’t come to Norway and not ski, we’ve got some of the best in the world. Besides, I want to show you all my favorite places in my country, and this mountain is where I used to vacation with my family when I was a child. Every winter, we’d spend a week up here skiing, playing in the snow, and bonding by the fire. When I was a teenager, I used to dream about one day bringing a girl back to this place. It can get very romantic.”
“So you’re taking me into the mountains for a night of romance?” Leah says skeptically.
I have to chuckle. Anything she says in that wry tone seems funny to me.
“Magnus,” Leah continues, “where are we going to stay? I don’t have the cash to pay for some fancy ski resort. You really should have asked me.”
“I told you, this trip is on me. I’m the one who wanted you to come. I wanted you to meet my parents, and now I want you to see my mountain. I’m not asking you to pay for anything, Leah. I’ve gotten us reservations at one of the resort’s luxury lodges.”
She frowns. “You shouldn’t have done that. It must have been so expensive. I’d have been perfectly happy to come up for the afternoon if you wanted me to see the place. Maybe we should just ski for a few hours and then go back to your house? I don’t see the point in wasting your money.”
“It’s not wasted,” I assure her. “Staying at the lodge is part of the experience. Besides, my reservations are non-refundable, so going home wouldn’t save me any money at all at this point.”
Another lie. I’ve stayed at the lodge enough times that I know the owner would bend the rules for me. But Leah is looking on the verge of backing out, finding an excuse to make me take her back down the mountain, and I can’t let her.
“Come on,” I say, “do this for me. I promise you won’t regret it.”
“What about my clothes?” she asks, but the challenge is half-hearted. “What about my toothbrush and everything? Am I just supposed to do without all my stuff?”
“Of course not,” I say with a grin, feeling pleased with myself and enjoying the moment immensely. “I had all your things packed up after we left the house this morning and sent to the cabin ahead of us. They’re waiting for us there.”
Leah groans and slides down a little in her seat. “You think of everything, don’t you,” she says, chuckling under her breath. “Tell me, Magnus, has anyone ever outsmarted you in your entire life?”
“You don’t mind really, do you?” I ask, suddenly anxious, glancing sideways at her face. “I really want to show you a good time, Leah, and I do think you’ll love it at the cabin. If you really want to go back to my house, I can arrange for your things to be retrieved and turn the car around right now.”
She rests a hand on t
op of mine. “I’m teasing you,” she says gently. “I’m excited to see the place. I just feel a little funny sometimes about you spending money on me, because…well, because you know I can’t reciprocate. I don’t have money like you do. Not even close. I can’t hope to buy you much more than a grilled cheese sandwich. And it seems so lopsided. Our relationship feels out of balance every time you make a gesture like this.”
I nod, understanding.
“What you need to realize, Leah,” I say, “is that for me, spending money isn’t that significant. There are things I need much more than money.” I take her hand in mine. “And you have those things in abundance.”
Leah flushes and is quiet.
We arrive at the lodge a half hour later, and I check us in. The place is just as beautiful as I remember, and Leah clearly wants to explore, but I drag her out of our lodge to the equipment rental shop.
“We need to hit the slopes before we lose the daylight,” I say. “Have you skied before?”
“Only a couple of times,” she says. “I went with friends in college. I’m not very good, though. I got stuck in the beginner class while all my friends went to the hard slopes. They’d been skiing all their lives, so I get it, but it was still embarrassing.”
I take Leah out to one of the beginner slopes and teach her how to grab the rope that pulls skiers to the top of the hill without falling over. Once at the top, I help her position herself and show her how to keep her skis parallel to accelerate or point the toes together to slow down. Leah pushes off and glides effortlessly down the hill.
I stare after her. “I thought you were bad at this?”
“I thought I was too. They wouldn’t let me out of Beginner’s Basics last time.”
“You must have had a bad instructor,” I say. “That’s the only explanation I can think of. You really seem to have a feel for the hill. Were you afraid at all?”
