Because of Lauren: A Love Story

by Vivi Underwood

  Lauren digested the information and asked softly, “And they adopted her?”

  “No, not legally. My great-grandmother kept in touch with the family and occasionally visited during my grandmother’s childhood.”

  “So, the family who joined the Church was your grandmother’s foster family?”

  “It must have been. My great-grandmother eventually married and had another child, but my grandmother never met him. She never met any family members, not even her grandparents. And she never knew the name of her birth father. The only thing her mother would tell her was that he was a prominent businessman, married and with a family.”

  Lauren lifted her head, and Jonas saw the sympathy in her eyes. “I was twenty-five when my grandmother passed away. It was a rough time for me. She had been such a vibrant person, so full of life, and suddenly she was gone. It was after her death that I started wondering about my own family connections. I have family on my mother’s side, and I have information about my father’s paternal side of the family, but with my father’s maternal side there was a mostly blank page. The only thing I knew for certain was my great-grandmother’s maiden name and the city where she was born. So, I started searching and found my great-grandmother had been one of seven children.”

  Lauren nodded slowly. She knew about her great-great-grandparents’ family. “Six boys and one girl,” she said evenly. “My great-grandfather was third from the bottom, and your great-grandmother was second from the top. Her name was Hildur.”

  Jonas looked at her in astonishment. “Yes, that’s right. How did you know?”

  “My mom has a copy of an old picture of my great-great-grandparents and their children. The children are lined up by age, and their names and ages are on the back.”

  “You mean you have known all along?”

  “I have known about my great-great-grandparents and their children,” she admitted. “But I have no idea if your grandmother’s existence was common knowledge among them.”

  “I don’t believe it was. According to my grandmother, her mother kept her birth a secret. If anyone suspected, no one ever talked about it. The family was a socially prominent one, and not even a hint of scandal was allowed to surface.”

  “What a terrible choice your great-grandmother was forced to make,” said Lauren, feeling great empathy for both the young woman and her child.

  “Yes,” said Jonas. He knew Lauren understood his great-grandmother’s dilemma at the time and did not judge her.

  She looked at him and said sincerely, “I’m so glad you found us, Jonas, because we would never have found you. But how did you find us?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute,” he promised, “but you’re not all I found. I’ve found you a couple of additional distant cousins as well.”

  Lauren’s face lit up. “Have you really? Well, where are you hiding them?”

  “On the Canary Islands,” he replied as though he had personally put them there. “They’ve been gone a couple of weeks but are due home tonight.”

  “Is it possible for us to get together before I leave? I would love to meet them.”

  ‘I’ll try to arrange something. I’ll talk to them and let you know.”

  “Are they a married couple?”

  “No, twins. Boy and girl. I guess I ought to say male and female, as they are thirty years old. Their names are William and Annie Linde. British mother,” he explained. “Their English is impeccable, very proper.”

  “And where do they fit into the family?”

  “Their grandfather was the half-brother my grandmother never met.”

  “You have done a lot of work, haven’t you?” said Lauren, impressed.

  Jonas nodded. “My biggest challenge was your family. I found your grandfather but no information about his wife and children. By this time your grandfather had been dead for almost twenty years, and he had no siblings. I didn’t know where to go for information.”

  “So, what did you do?”

  “As unlikely as it sounds, I invited an elderly friend to lunch. And a miracle happened.”

  Lauren looked at him expectantly. When he remained silent she prompted, “Well, don’t keep me in suspense. This is about my family, too.”

  “More than you know, Lauren,” he said. “That’s the amazing part of the story. My mother has a good friend who grew up here but has lived in Oslo for many years. Last year, she came to Bergen for a visit, and we had lunch together. She knew I’d been working on finding my grandmother’s family, so during our long conversation that day she asked how things were coming along. I told her I had come to a dead end with Erik Hjellestad. I said I was sure he must have family somewhere because I’d found his gravestone online and the inscription read, Our Beloved Father. But where they were and what had happened to them was a mystery. You can imagine my shock when my elderly friend said she had known the family, that she and Ellen, the Hjellestad’s middle daughter, had been school friends in the old days and often played at each other’s homes. From memory, she recited the wife’s name and the names of the other two daughters. She claimed the mother and children moved to America in the nineteen-fifties. She even remembered they had settled in Salt Lake City. I was blown away. I had spent countless hours trying to discover anything at all about Erik Hjellestad’s family, and she had known all along.

  “That evening I went online and checked the Salt Lake City newspapers, hoping to find the wife’s obituary. And there it was. I finally had something concrete to go on. And the rest you know.”

  Listening to him, Lauren was fascinated by the roundabout way he found her family. It shouldn’t have been that difficult to trace them. According to her mother, it had been common knowledge at the time that Erik Hjellestad’s wife and children moved to the States. True, it was more than half a century ago, but the family returned for vacations over the years, and the girls had kept in touch with some of their friends. Lauren found it amazing that her family’s whereabouts, known to so many at the time, had proven to be a mystery for Jonas.

  “Everyone who knew them knew they moved to Salt Lake City,” Lauren told him. “It wasn’t a secret. My mom and her sisters returned to spend some summers with their father and are still in touch with childhood friends. And, of course, older Church members here know them.” She tilted her head and looked at him. “You should have taken out a full-page newspaper ad with the headline: Seeking Information about the Family of the Late Erik Hjellestad. I’m sure it would have brought results.”

  Jonas shook his head in disbelief at such a simple solution, so she added, “My mother and her sisters still visit every few years and always get together with old friends. Chances are someone who knew them would have seen the ad. Why are you laughing?”

  “Because your mind fascinates me.”

  “You are making fun of me.”

  “No. Just wish I had thought of that.”

  “That’s why God sent you a miracle,” Lauren said softly. “They work even better.”

  Jonas smiled. “Apparently.” He looked at her. Her skin was like velvet, and her eyes had that luminous quality that so affected him. Of its own volition, his hand reached out and lightly caressed her cheek. “I think He sent me more than one.”

  They were leaning companionably, side by side against the terrace wall, enjoying the still mild, late afternoon and the magnificent view. When Lauren spied a sleek yacht gliding almost noiselessly toward the harbor, she was reminded of the previous day and their time on the water. If not for her, Jonas would still be on the island, doing what he loved best. Feeling somewhat guilty for having deprived him of his weekend, she turned to him and said apologetically, “I’m sorry I made you miss today on the island.”

  Jonas brushed her apology away with a smile. “You didn’t make me miss anything. If I’d wanted to spend the day there, I would have headed back out this morning.”

 
“But yesterday you gave the impression you wanted to stay.”

  “Because I didn’t want our time together to end.”

  “But . . .”

  Jonas leaned his head a fraction closer, gave in to the unbearably tender feelings he had for her and kissed her protest away.

  When he lifted his head, he looked at her for several moments without speaking. She had the most incredible face, and if he read her correctly, she was just as affected by the kiss as he was. Two more days, he thought. It wasn’t enough, but it was all they had. The mere idea made him ache inside. He stepped behind her and pulled her against his heart. This might be their last time together in this spot, and he wanted to remember her here.

  They stood like that for a long time, looking out on the city they both loved. Neither spoke until Lauren finally said, “I’ll miss it here. I love this city. I love seeing it from this vantage point.” She turned in his arms, and he saw her face soften as she said, “But most of all I’ll miss you. Because I love you.”

  To say he was stunned by her admission would be the understatement of the year. He was utterly enchanted by her, had been from the start, but he had planned on moving slowly, allowing her to get to know him gradually, over time. Yet here she was, bravely confessing her love.

  When he hesitated, she said, “I’ve never said that to a man before, and it isn’t required that you say it back. I just wanted you to know.”

  Stroking her hair with a not quite steady hand, he murmured, “I don’t know how you do it, but you always manage to surprise me.” His hand moved from her hair to her face. “I love you, too, Lauren. From the first moment. I saw you, and that’s all it took.”

  She smiled through unshed tears. “It didn’t happen quite that fast for me, but I knew last night in the car. It was so sudden, I almost couldn’t breathe. I wanted to tell you, but . . .” her words trailed off.

  “There is nothing you can’t tell me.”

  She hesitated a moment, then said tentatively, “Do you believe in dreams, Jonas?”

  He thought of the times his grandmother had come to him in a dream, each time encouraging him to search his family tree. She had seemed so real it was as if she were in the room with him. Yes, he believed in dreams.

  He looked at her. Nodded. Then waited.

  “I dreamed about you. Before we met.”

  Jonas’ only reaction was one single raised eyebrow.

  His reaction didn’t deter her. “Remember when I asked if we had met before? Last night it finally came to me why you looked familiar. We had met. In a dream.”

  “A dream?”

  Lauren nodded. “I fell asleep on Jon’s dock my first day here. Jet lag, I guess. And I had a dream. It was so vivid, it stayed with me. We were on your boat together, talking and laughing. Then Jon nudged me awake. I didn’t realize it was a dream until he woke me, it was so real.”

  Jonas’ thoughtful gaze rested on her. He didn’t doubt her for a minute. “When did you put two and two together?”

  “Last night in the car. Remember yesterday on the boat? We were on the upper deck, you were steering, and I was leaning against the railing. As we talked and laughed together, the strangest feeling came over me. Once before we’d been exactly like that. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I worried it to death until it finally came to me last night when we were driving home. I had been on the boat with you before. In my dream. That’s why you looked familiar the day we met.”

  Jonas looked at her for a long time, then said quietly, “Wow.” He pulled her close. “And you wonder why I fell in love with you so quickly? I was destined to love you, Lauren. And it explains my absolute determination to find your family.”

  And my strong desire to meet you, she thought silently. Then the reality of their situation intruded. They lived on different continents! She sighed. Why were there so often obstacles in life? Why, for once, couldn’t my personal life be simple and easy? She looked up and stole a peek at his face. He looked happy and content. She hated to spoil the moment.

  Leaning back in order to see his face fully, she said, “We’ve got ourselves in a pickle, haven’t we?”

  He smiled at her use of words. “A pickle?”

  “In the future, seeing each other regularly could get a little complicated,” she spelled out.

  His eyes skimmed her serious face. Complicated? he thought. When from the first moment she’d filled his life with joy? “Are you involved with anyone?”

  Lauren shook her head.

  “Neither am I,” he assured her. “Doesn’t sound very complicated to me.”

  “We live on different continents,” she reminded him.

  “We’ll work it out,” he said with absolute confidence.

  Lauren didn’t quite share his confidence. Across town was one thing. Across a small country could be accommodated. But across an ocean?

  Seeing her dubious expression, he cajoled her gently. “Where is your optimism? It’s taken me all these years to find you. You think I’m going to let a little thing like the Atlantic Ocean keep us apart?”

  “You run a business on this side of that ocean while I have a demanding job on the other side of it.”

  “That’s why they invented airplanes,” he pointed out so smugly you’d think he’d had a hand in their invention. “And if you are available the first Saturday of next month, we have a date.”

  “You’ll be in the States?” she asked, surprised.

  He nodded and watched a smile spread across her face.

  “Business trip?” she wanted to know.

  “Not this time. We are going to a baptism. A mischievous little imp has invited me.” He told her about the phone call the night before.

  Lauren stared at him, her smile fading. “You are going all the way to America for a baptism?”

  “And a date with you.”

  She shook her head and said slowly, “I don’t know you at all, do I?”

  “You know the important things,” he assured her. “But you can’t expect to know everything about me in just a couple of days.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  He smiled. “What is it you want to know?”

  “Everything! But I’ll settle for knowing why people treated you like a celebrity at church.”

  His lips twitched slightly. “Celebrity? Nonsense. They were just being friendly.”

  Lauren didn’t think so. They had lined up to shake his hand, and he had taken the time to chat with each of them. “And why did you make it sound as if we barely knew each other in Sunday school class?”

  His face turned serious. He answered without hesitation. “I didn’t want you to be an object of speculation.”

  Lauren’s eyes opened wide. “Was I in danger of being an object of speculation?”

  Before he had a chance to explain, through the open patio doors they heard the chime of the doorbell. Startled, Lauren asked, “Are you expecting company?”

  Jonas shook his head but seemed disinclined to move or let her go.

  “Aren’t you going to answer?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t want to share you with anyone right now.”

  “Jonas,” she scolded him gently and slid out of his arms.

  “Then you answer it,” he suggested mildly. “Just let me escape to the den first. And tell whoever it is I am not available.” He was gone in seconds.

  Lauren watched him walk away, a frown marring her forehead. That was odd! Did he know who was standing on his doorstep? Or did he at least suspect? Baffled and curious, she went to open the door.

  On the doorstep stood tall, blonde and gorgeous personified, with a demeanor that clearly said she had every right to be there. She gave Lauren a pointed look and without preamble asked, “Who are you?”

  Surprised by her rudeness, Lauren took a step back, but thinking the bea
uty might be important to Jonas, she opted for charm. Opening the door wide, she invited her inside. “I’m Lauren Hart, Jonas’ cousin, visiting from America.”

  “You are staying here?” the woman asked in an accusatory tone, neglecting to introduce herself. “Jonas doesn’t normally invite young women to stay with him.”

  Good to know, but did she keep track? “I am actually staying with friends,” Lauren explained in what she hoped was a friendly voice. “Jonas was kind enough to suggest we spend the day together so we could get to know each other better.”

  Slightly mollified, the woman dropped the imperious tone a notch. “I thought he’d still be on that godforsaken island of his, but when I spotted his car, I decided to drop by.”

  Spotted his car? Jonas’ car was parked in the garage with the automatic door locked. Lauren couldn’t quite picture this elegant lady climbing up the side of the building to peek through the strip of glass near the top of the garage door just to see if the car was home. The thought made her want to laugh out loud. Catching herself, she said instead, “Godforsaken island?”

  “You don’t know? Jonas has a summer home on an island off the coast. It’s not my kind of place, but Jonas likes to hide away out there this time of year.”

  “Does he?”

  “He spends half his life there,” the woman complained. “If he’s your cousin, I guess you know he’s quite wealthy.”

  No, Lauren didn’t know but remained silent.

  “For years, I have begged him to take me someplace exotic and romantic, with warm sandy beaches and plenty of sunshine,” she continued, “but he stubbornly refuses.”

  “Does he? How frustrating for you,” Lauren commiserated.

  “Maddening,” the woman acknowledged with a nod, then in an almost friendly voice asked, “Do you have any influence with him? Being family.”