Stockholm Diaries, Melanie

by Rebecca Hunter

  Henrik cut himself off, suddenly aware of the change on Mel’s face.

  “So you want to tell his story?” she said flatly.

  “I know it’s your project,” said Henrik, softening his voice. “And I know he left you and never came back.”

  “He abandoned us. I never once heard from him in all these years. And I spent my entire childhood wondering if my mother would suddenly disappear, too. I still—”

  No, she wouldn’t go any further. She wouldn’t expose more of this wound to him. But he could probably guess what she hadn’t said. He had seen enough evidence already of her own compulsive need to be free of all dependence, to never let herself be abandoned again.

  Henrik closed his eyes, as if he were taking in some of her pain for a moment. He gave her a slow nod.

  “I’m so sorry he hurt you. And if I were you, I’d want to know why, too. But that’s not his only story. I just hope you’re willing to tell about the person I knew as well.”

  For some reason, she hadn’t seen that one coming. Or maybe she’d expected him to be a little less direct about it. Instead, the man had just sifted through her internal jumble of struggles and laid them out in front of her.

  “That’s fair,” she said quietly. She heard the edge of vulnerability in her voice but didn’t resist it. “I am still incredibly angry at him for leaving. But I do want to write about the person you knew, too.”

  Henrik smiled. The smile was slow and warm, with none of the distance behind it this time.

  “Okay,” he said, moving his chair into the table. “We’ll work it out. Want to eat now?”

  Mel studied Henrik’s face as he served himself a large wedge of the quiche. As they had stumbled through this conversation, gently exploring what lay behind each other’s defenses, something had shifted in him, something small, but it was there. Some of his aloofness had faded, and he looked almost relaxed.

  And this man could actually cook. She wouldn’t have guessed it, but his skills in the kitchen clearly surpassed her own, despite his taste for ketchup. But more surprising was just how good it felt to sit across from him in this odd domestic scene. She ate in silence, trying to make sense of what this meant. It wasn’t long before that line of thought made her squirm.

  The scrape of her chair against the floor echoed in the quiet cabin. Henrik looked up, eyebrows raised.

  “I’m going to change clothes, and then we can get started,” she mumbled, standing up.

  He nodded.

  She heard the clatter of dishes from behind the bathroom door. His footsteps traveled across the cabin and into her father’s office as she washed her face. She had never been so acutely distracted by a man before, and she tried hard to force her mind elsewhere. Like the project in front of them.

  Mel walked into the office a few minutes later. She could feel Henrik’s eyes on her, but she deliberately kept hers on the journals, stacked in piles on the desk, arranged into some sort of system. She sat down and pulled out the paper he had shown her before.

  “I’ve grouped these by periods in his life,” he said. “This pile is before he left for the U.S., and this one is the years after he returned, when he took a teaching post at Stockholm University. These next ones were the years he did a lot of travelling: poet in residence in Germany, and so on. Then comes the missing year. We pick up when he came back to Sweden and moved out here, to this cabin. The rest of the years are here, for the most part.”

  Mel picked up a book from the top of a pile and opened it up, leafing through the pages. Her father’s careful handwriting covered each one, so frustratingly indecipherable.

  “I’d like to start with the years after he left—” she broke off. She had to approach her father’s life objectively. Or at least make the attempt. She tried again.

  “I’d like to start with the years after he returned from the U.S. I’ve gathered information about his earlier years from family and about his years abroad from different former colleagues. Some of them even saved letters from him in English. But I know much less about his adult life in Sweden.”

  Henrik nodded and took a book off one of the piles. He flipped through it and then sat down in the chair next to the desk. Mel searched the top drawers and pulled out a pad of paper and pen.

  “Do you want me to start reading?” Henrik asked.

  Mel nodded. “I’ll take some notes, but I also just want to hear what his writing sounds like.”

  “Okay,” Henrik said, and he took a deep breath. “‘January 7. It’s dark outside, the kind of tender but relentless darkness of winter. The apartment building is quiet. Adults have returned to work, children are at preschool or at school, and I, I live in another world here…’”

  The words came slowly in Henrik’s low voice, sinking in. Mel leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, listening to her father’s thoughts. The journal was filled with descriptions of the immediate world around him—the silence of new snow, the glimpses of daylight in the dark Nordic winter, the cold on his fingers as he fumbled with the key to his building. Her father’s days were hardly remarkable, but the entries were like poems in prose form, observations tinged with emotion that kept her wanting more.

  And then there was the mention of a Her every day. Never a name, just She and Her, always capitalized, Henrik noted, and always mentioned with that same, sad longing woven into the passage. What She would have said about the smell of cinnamon rolls when he passed the bakery. Which high-heeled boots he imagined she would wear in the knee-deep snow.

  She. Her mother, Mel assumed from the date, though she didn’t think her mother had ever worn high-heeled boots in her life. This was the year after her father had left them. But it didn’t make sense. If he missed her mother so much, why didn’t he simply contact her? In the early years after his abrupt departure, Mel was fairly certain she would have taken him back, though her memories as a four-year-old weren’t particularly reliable.

  “‘… and I can feel the warmth of the coffee pushing away the darkness outside the window.’”

  Henrik coughed, and his voice stopped.

  “Umm,” he said. “Can I take a quick break for a glass of water?”

  Mel blinked a couple times, trying to reorient herself into the present.

  “Yes, of course.”

  Henrik stood up and left the room. Mel looked outside the window: summer, her father’s cabin. So far from the dark, snowy world of her father’s journals, and, yet, he had taken her there. Mel’s disillusionment with her father’s writing had come early, when the distance between the love that he described and the bitterness his memory evoked in her kind, loving mother became painfully obvious. But the writing in these journals felt beautifully effortless. And guileless.

  Henrik walked back into the room carrying two glasses of water.

  “My voice needs a little training,” he said, smiling. “I haven’t spoken this much in years.”

  He handed one of the glasses to her and sat back down in his chair.

  Mel stared at him with a sudden realization.

  “You were translating those journals as you went along, while you were reading,” she said softly. “I had forgotten that you were translating the whole time. You’re that good. It’s no wonder my father asked you to help.”

  Henrik’s face flushed, and he looked away. Mel’s eyes grew wider. This man—the man who laughed at her and teased her—turned red at her compliment?

  “Forget I said that,” she said quickly. “Replace it with thank you. Thank you for helping me with this project. And for everything. I planned and planned for this trip, and I have a notebook full of lists to prove it, but I’m not sure what I would have done if you weren’t here.”

  She reached across and put her hand on his arm that was resting beside the open journal. She had meant the gesture to be tender and conciliatory, but when she touched his warm skin, she could feel that it was neither of those things. Instead, it had the opposite
effect—provoking, inflaming the tension between them. His arm flinched as her fingers connected with his skin, and she quickly withdrew her hand. But it was too late. The warmth of his body spread through her and raced back to her pounding heart. She was so aware of his nearness, taking in each tiny move he made as her mind raced to catch up with the sudden, palpable shift in the room.

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  She had broken the unspoken rule laid out after their kiss: There are lines we will not cross. Even this brief brush of her hand felt far, far over the line. But she wanted to do it again.

  She could see he was about to stand up, to run from the threat that he registered in the room. But this was supposed to be a work arrangement. Professional. It was why she had wanted to pay him, however shaky her finances were: she couldn’t have him leave every time he felt like it.

  “Wait,” she said. “Don’t go.”

  Henrik stood up anyway, and Mel fought the urge to touch him again, to hold him there. Instead, she stood up, her body now between him and the door, but she didn’t move closer. His eyes darted from the door to her. She swallowed, and her heart thumped in her throat.

  “Henrik, I need you to stay. I need you to help me. Please don’t leave yet.”

  His shoulders unclenched a bit, but his face remained hard, impassive. She had kindled some sort of emotion in him. Anger? Fear? Whatever it was, his expression made it clear he didn’t want her near him right now.

  “Henrik,” Mel tried again. “Can we try to figure out how to work together? I’m sorry I… I made you uncomfortable.”

  Finally she had said something right. She watched the tension visibly leave his shoulders and arms. He ran his hand through his hair and looked down at the floor.

  “There’s nothing wrong with what you’re doing, Melanie,” he said quietly, “nothing at all.”

  He spoke her name with the same, soft sounds as he always did. She closed her eyes and tried to resist the feelings that the low roughness of his voice stirred inside her. He was telling her that he didn’t want anything to do with those feelings, and if she gave any thought to rational arguments, she didn’t either. They had no place in the work she needed to do. She took a deep breath and tried to make her voice sound professional.

  “Maybe it’s best if we decide on an amount of time to work each day or even a schedule?”

  “Okay,” he said. “Whatever you’d like.”

  She blinked at him. He didn’t say anything else, so she continued.

  “I’d rather start earlier,” she said. “Then I can work on formulating the ideas into the actual text of the book in the afternoon.”

  “Fine.”

  “How about something like 9 to 11 in the morning?”

  “Sure.”

  He stood in front of her, still not quite looking at her. She gave an impatient sigh.

  “You know, discussion and compromise means you can give your opinion, too.”

  Finally, he smiled a little.

  “Okay,” he said, his voice softer now. “Then if you don’t mind, let’s move it a little later. I have some things I usually do in the mornings.”

  “What did you have in mind?” she asked.

  “We’ll start at 11. We can break in the middle for lunch so I can rest my throat a little. I think I’ll need it.”

  Mel couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “So everything is fine as long as you’re in charge?” she asked.

  He smiled a little wider.

  “Basically, yes.”

  “I’ll try to remember that,” she said dryly.

  “Yes,” he said, finally looking down at her, his eyes warm and sparkling, “Please do.”

  Chapter 7

  The afternoon sun was hot on Mel’s back.

  “Here it is,” said Henrik, gesturing to the forest in front of them. “If you run out of fruit in the middle of the summer, there’s more than enough here.”

  Mel looked around. As far as she could see, the forest floor was covered with low, dense bushes. The trunks of tall pines rose up and spread, forming a quiet canopy. She searched for the mysterious fruit Henrik had referred to, but she couldn’t find anything.

  “Pine cones?” she said, only half-kidding.

  Henrik gave her an amused smile and squatted down by a bush at the side of the path.

  “These?” she asked, squatting next to him. She studied the dark green leaves on the branch of the scraggly bush. Then she looked at him skeptically.

  “Is this some kind of Swedish joke on foreigners?”

  Henrik gave a deep chuckle and shook his head.

  “No joke,” he said, and he lifted up the little branch.

  Underneath the thin leaves hung a scattering of tiny blueberries. She had never seen them this small. Henrik picked one and offered it to her. It was tender and sweet, sweeter than the fleshy, store-bought version she was used to. She picked another and closed her eyes when she put it in her mouth, letting the juicy sweetness sit on her tongue.

  “I thought you’d like them,” he said softly, his eyes fixed on her mouth.

  He gathered the rest from the branch and held them in the palm of his hand for them both to eat from. Mel took another and then looked out at the bushes in front of her. Now she saw them everywhere, hiding under the leaves, or sometimes even dangling off a jutting branch.

  “I have to admit,” she said, reaching for more, “I didn’t even know that blueberries grew on bushes.”

  Henrik laughed. “Where did you think they grew? In little plastic packages?”

  Mel rolled her eyes. “I never really thought about it. But this is amazing. There must be millions here.”

  The forest was quiet and still as they picked the plant in front of her clean. The bush just beyond sprouted plump berries that glistened in the sunlight. Mel moved to step into the forest and pick one, but Henrik motioned her along the path. On the other side of the forest, the path curved up a hill. Gradually the dirt turned to stone underfoot, and all but a few trees disappeared as they walked up to the highest point. From there, the rocky islands of the archipelago were visible in all directions.

  “I can’t believe I had to talk you into doing this,” panted Mel.

  She stopped and sat down on the smooth flat rock to catch her breath. Henrik, on the other hand, showed no signs of tiring. The other side of the hill sloped down, solid rock, into a tiny cove she recognized from her walk with Alice.

  “We were supposed to be working,” he said, but he was smiling.

  “Actually, I want to talk about the end of this last journal,” said Mel. She looked up at Henrik, shading her eyes from the sun. “We can walk and talk at the same time, can’t we?”

  “I’m not very good at doing two things at once,” Henrik said, chuckling.

  Mel rolled her eyes.

  “I think you’ll manage,” she said. “Where’s the fishing spot you were talking about?”

  Henrik pointed to the stand of trees that hooked out from the beach directly below where they stood.

  “If you stand by those trees and drop your line back towards shore, you’ll catch something. The water is calm and surprisingly deep, so the fish like it there,” he said. “Your father showed me the spot.”

  Mel looked down and tried to imagine her father, the man her four-year-old memory had stored away, patiently teaching a young Henrik to fish. The image wouldn’t come. He was only a presence in her mind, not a three-dimensional person.

  The wind blew across Mel’s skin, and she shivered. The constant sunlight was deceptive—Swedish summer was proving to be quite cold. Mel still hadn’t gotten used to the idea, a fact which was clearly illustrated by her choice of clothes: a tank top and a thin, cotton skirt.

  Henrik frowned down at her.

  “You’re cold,” he said and started unbuttoning his own shirt. He pulled it off, leaving him in a white t-shirt that stretched tight across his well-defin
ed chest. You’re staring, she realized, turning away. He slipped his long-sleeved shirt over Mel’s shoulders, rubbing her arms for warmth.

  Mel’s instinct was to fight the heat that spread from his warm hands straight through her arms, down lower. But why fight it? Couldn’t she just allow herself this feeling, just for a moment?

  His hands slowed, as if he were taking her in as well. She closed her eyes and let her mind wander to how his hands would feel against her skin. And in other places, much more sensitive.

  Then his hands were gone. It was probably better to stop her thoughts there, she told herself, though her body suggested otherwise.

  She let out her breath and looked at him.

  “When were you married?”

  Henrik’s face showed his surprise. Then he frowned.

  “I don’t really like to talk about that,” he said. “Why are you asking?”

  She swallowed, making sure she kept some distance in her voice.

  “You know my sorest points, and I know very little about you. If we’re going to work together on something that’s so emotional for me, I want to be able to trust you a little. I’d like to understand you better.”

  Mel hadn’t realized just how true this statement was until she spoke it. Knowing more about him would help ease the resistance she felt to letting him read her father’s most private thoughts. To letting him see that her father never, not once, wrote about her the year after he abandoned her.

  But that wasn’t all. She wanted to know what it was about him that she responded to. He felt so specifically tuned to push all her buttons—the wrong ones or the right ones, depending on one’s perspective.

  He frowned out at the sea, his long, dark lashes hiding his eyes. He let out a sigh.

  “Okay. That’s fair,” he finally said. “I married just a year out of university, at 24. Isa was 26, and she was ready, and I didn’t see any reason not to. We lived in London. She worked in a museum, and I wrote.”

  Against Mel’s will, her own version of Isa came to mind: older, with a sophisticated British accent and a sleek, short haircut, in a gallery of paintings. Nothing like me, Mel thought. She was almost glad she couldn’t ask any more questions about his ex-wife within the boundaries of the conversation she had set up. Just this image was difficult enough.