Reunion: A Novel

by Lauraine Snelling

  Marcus dropped his napkin on the table and pushed his chair back. “I’ll be in my study and then I’m going for a run later. You want to come?”

  “No, I have to work tonight so I’ll take a nap.” As he left the room, she rose and started putting lids on things to put the extra food in the refrigerator. Kirsten could fix her own plate. It was probably a good thing Kirsten wasn’t here right now. She wanted to shake her and yell and—and what? Tell her to give her dad more time. Dump all her frustrations on a kid who was trying to deal with this and struggling so hard herself? Sure she was supposed to dump all her cares on Jesus, but He let her take them back. Couldn’t He hold on to them? She slammed the palm of her hand on the counter. Surely a run would help sort this out, but she needed to take a nap so she would be alert all night. She looked heavenward. “I am sick and tired of being in the middle here, you know? I don’t know what to do and you’re not speaking clearly, if you are speaking at all.” Letting the tears roll, she sucked in a deep breath and felt the anger drain away.

  When her cell chimed, she could tell by the Illinois prefix that it was either Curt or Gwen. Her hello sounded almost normal, so well trained was she to sound like a nurse and pastor’s wife. Right now broken hearts would have to wait. Kirsten hadn’t talked with her brothers yet either. Maybe she would go for a run and just keep on running.

  “Hi, Mom,” Curt said. “Thought it was about time I called, since you haven’t been calling me.”

  If you only knew. “Things are rather crazy around here. How are you two?”

  “Things are always crazy around there. I take it the graduation and party went off as planned?”

  “Pretty much. It rained, so they held it in the gym but the sun came out later. We had a houseful and plenty of food.”

  “And Kirsten is glad it’s over? I’m surprised she didn’t call me.”

  “Sorry to hear that, she’s had a lot on her mind.” If that’s not oversimplifying things! “Are you done with finals now?”

  “Almost. One more to go. Gwen got a raise and likes her job more all the time.”

  “That’s good. When will you be here for the reunion?” If they ever got it going, that is.

  “I thought we’d come on Wednesday but we’ll have to leave right after. She has to be back to work on Monday morning.”

  “Well, I was hoping for longer, but we’ll be happy with every minute we have with you.”

  “How’s Dad?”

  “Out running, I think. He said he was going to.”

  “Tell him it’s his turn to call.” He dropped his voice. “Gwen is doing better, Mom, but it seems to come and go. I’m so glad the job is helping.”

  “Me too.”

  “Tell Kirsten to give me a call. I want to hear about graduation and her plans for the fall.”

  “I will. I need to go. Thanks for calling and tell Gwen hello for me.” Once they hung up she held the flat cell against her forehead. How to not lie but not give out the information either. How she hated keeping secrets. Especially ones of this magnitude. But it was Kirsten’s and Marcus’s place to tell the rest of the family. Knowing her sons, they would be really unhappy to know they weren’t told right away. As the Bible said, the truth shall set you free. And right now she needed some freedom. And Keira still hadn’t told Marcus. Lord God, what am I going to do?

  Chapter Nineteen

  They can’t use the house.

  Keira sat straight up in bed. She needed to be able to search the house again, armed this time with knowing what she was looking for. Surely Leah would help if only they knew what they were looking for. Which raised the question—what was she looking for? Trinkets, mementos, cards, mention of Dagmar’s life in St. Cloud. All that would just take time and perseverance. The important thing: something about the man who was her biological father. Some scrap of information. Anything. Of course she hadn’t gone through all the letters yet. Reading letters was on her list for today. Thursday. She’d told Kirsten to work today.

  She heaved a sigh that made Bjorn roll over. It wasn’t fair to wake him early because she could no longer sleep, so she slipped out of bed and into her robe and slippers. A glance at the red numerals on the clock told her she had a couple of extra hours. Downstairs she changed the timer on the coffee machine so it would start immediately and took out two chocolate crinkle cookies from the tin. The first cup of coffee of the day always tasted better with cookies. When the machine quit gurgling, she poured her mug full and, with plate in hand, ambled over to her chair surrounded by stacks of letters on the various tables. Inhaling the steaming fragrance, she took her first sip of coffee and smiled at the pleasure. Much as she loved tea, there was something special about the first cup of coffee in the morning.

  Alternately munching and sipping, she found the stack with the earliest postmarks and set them in her lap to sort according to correspondent. How they had written letters so faithfully when the telephone was so much faster was beyond her. After all, St. Cloud wasn’t across the country, not even that far across the state. But thank God they did—she might be able to find some scrap of information.

  There were letters from her mother, Keira’s grandma Ilse, from her next-up-the-line sister, Helga, and from Elaine, the eldest daughter. There were no letters from her two brothers. They probably used the telephone, or just didn’t talk, like many men of the day. Well, many men in general. Keira started with the letters from Ilse. Removing the paper from the envelope she skimmed the cursive on lined note paper. News of the day from Munsford caught her attention but there was no mention of a man. If only she had the letters from Dagmar to her family!

  Ilse expressed disappointment that Dagmar was not coming home for Christmas. Her mother offered to send her a train ticket, but Dagmar must have declined. What had happened that sent her away from home?

  Another asked, “Are you in some kind of trouble? Your letter sounds so sad and distracted. If you lose your job, you know you are always welcome here. We would love to have you come home again. With harvest coming on there is plenty of work for everyone.”

  That was the only clue in the stack of twenty or so letters from Ilse. Keira picked up the calendar and started figuring the timeline. Her mother moved away after high school graduation. Dagmar and Kenneth returned to Munsford two years after she was born, and moved into the farmhouse to help her parents as they added more acreage to the farm so it would support two families. The original farmhouse had burned down in a prairie fire back in the forties. She had pictures of that house, and now Leah had them for the memory book. Marcus was born in Munsford six months or so after they returned to the farm.

  Keira started to read Elaine’s letters next. She heard Bjorn stirring and then the shower. Time to make breakfast and get ready for work. How she hated stopping already. Someday, she promised herself, she would go back and read the letters again and get them in a scrapbook with pictures or something. Would the younger generation care about these letters and the stories they contained?

  “How did the committee meeting go?” she asked as she set a bowl of oatmeal with dried cranberries in front of him. “The muffins will be ready in a moment.” She’d taken some from the freezer and was heating them in a brown paper sack in the oven. They stayed moist that way.

  “Henry says the truck will roll again on Sunday morning. He’s got too much to do to go earlier. They’ll be loading on Friday.”

  “You aren’t going this time?” She put the muffins in a tea-towel-lined basket and set them on the table, then sat down.

  “No, we’ll pass the privilege around. They don’t know yet if there will be a family to bring back or not.”

  “Oh goodness, I forgot to mention that. I’ve given this a lot of thought and I’d really rather we didn’t have a family living out there what with getting ready for the reunion and all.” She buttered her muffin carefully so she needn’t look at her husband.

  “But we offered.”

  “I know, but… well, I’m concern
ed about the reunion and some of those coming are planning on staying there. That doesn’t give a family much time to move in and then be moved out again.” She thought a moment. “Maybe we could rent a house in town if we have a family in need.”

  “Keira, what is going on?” He laid his spoon down and gave her his full attention.

  “Nothing, I’m just feeling overwhelmed. You know I’ve not been excited about the reunion this year. Leah isn’t either, but since some of the relatives have already bought plane tickets, what choice do we have but to go ahead?” She realized she was rattling.

  “Does this have anything to do with Kenneth not being your biological father?”

  “Why would you ask that?” Don’t lie, you cannot lie.

  “I don’t know, this just isn’t like you.” He went back to eating his breakfast but glanced up at her every once in a while. He checked his watch. “I have an appointment in fifteen minutes so I have to run. You’re bringing Kirsten?”

  “Yes, at least I guess so.” I better check on that.

  He picked up the briefcase he’d left by the door. “See you in a bit.”

  “Whew,” Keira huffed out as the door closed behind him. Even something like this was not worth telling a lie for. She had been stretching the truth some since he felt she was blowing the father thing out of proportion but not an out-and-out lie. She just wanted to be able to search every inch of that house for more information and she couldn’t do that with a family living there. What was so wrong about that?

  A couple of hours later, after setting Kirsten down with the birthday card list, Keira picked up her to-do list and set to getting items crossed off. The phone kept ringing, but all the calls were for Bjorn. She transferred them, took messages when he was on the phone already, and kept on trying to get her own work done. At this rate she’d have to stay late today and that definitely wasn’t going to raise her happiness scale.

  A call from Leah after lunch was a welcome diversion.

  “You got a moment?” she asked.

  “For you I do. What’s up?”

  “I have a strange piece of paper here. It fell out from behind the picture in one of those stand-up cardboard frames.”

  Keira felt her heart leap. “What does it say?”

  “Just a man’s name. Sam. None of our relatives are named Sam or Samuel, are they?”

  “Not that I know of. Probably just some friend. Who is in the picture?”

  “It’s Dagmar’s high school graduation picture. Strange to have it in one of those old-fashioned cardboard frames, though.”

  “Well, don’t throw it away.”

  “I wouldn’t. But I just wondered if you had any idea who it might be.”

  Keira set the phone back in the charger. Could this be the man? She’d be watching carefully for a mention of a Sam in any letters. That’s a help. I’ve not thought to look on the backs of any of the framed pictures. Often she used a frame more than once too, putting a more current picture on top of an older one, like with her children’s school pictures. And so many photos were still on the walls at the home place. The thought that those fairly current frames might be a storage place for old secret things never entered her mind—until now.

  If only she had time to go out there, but then Bjorn would make some comment about her leaving work and letting this situation take over her life. She did not feel like arguing right this minute. He just didn’t understand how finding out something about that man was so terribly important to her. And she didn’t really understand why he didn’t understand, so they would have to agree to disagree on this subject.

  Sam. Who was Sam? She pondered for a moment. If she found out who he was and he was still alive, that would be one thing, but if he had already passed away, which was a strong possibility, so what? Did she have half brothers and sisters? If he had known about her, he could have found a way to contact Dagmar, couldn’t he?

  Maybe Bjorn was right, and leaving sleeping dogs lying in the sun was the better action. But still.

  That evening Keira sat back down to peruse more letters, now looking for any mention of a man named Sam. In the first of Helga’s letters she found a Sam all right, but it was short for Samantha. So why was the paper in the back of a picture? She put Ilse’s letters together in a manila envelope and labeled them with a name and dates for beginning to end. Then she did Elaine’s. As a writer of letters, she was the least prolific. Keira remembered her as the quiet one. But when she spoke, people listened because she came up with such profound things. She and her husband, Arnold, had moved back to Munsford when his health started to deteriorate. The other two sisters helped care for him until he died, but Elaine didn’t last a long time after he passed away. She always said he took her heart with him.

  Keira blinked. Even thinking about her aunt and uncle made her sad. Her mother and Kenneth had such a good family. So many people no longer had family close by. You better appreciate this family reunion instead of grumbling about it, she scolded herself. Another one of those times to count your blessings.

  Bjorn’s car had a squeal in what must be the brakes. She’d been hearing it for a while now. Was he ignoring it or did he not hear it? It was about time for both of them to get their hearing checked. She’d noticed the TV control was on a higher volume.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, after setting his briefcase on a chair.

  “What? Why?”

  “Keira, just do as I ask for once without questioning.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  “Hold out your right hand.”

  She did and felt something paper laid in her palm. She closed her fingers over it and grinned in anticipation.

  “Open your eyes.”

  She did and stared down at the folder in her hands. “A cruise in Norway? Through the fjords? Oh how wonderful.” She threw her arms around his neck. “This trip gets better and better. Now I wish I had made something special so we could celebrate.” She kissed his chin. “You are a man of many surprises, Bjorn Johnston.” They walked arm in arm into the kitchen and together got the meal on the table. How could she have gotten so distracted by the past that she hadn’t thought about their trip lately? We are going to Norway. We are actually going to Norway and now on a cruise too. Maybe she should buy a language program so they could brush up on their Norwegian. They’d both learned to speak it as children, but, like many other things, it had been neglected through the years as the Norwegian-speaking relatives passed away.

  After supper, she went back to reading the letters while Bjorn worked on the computer in his home office. She made up an envelope for Helga’s letters and put the letters in as she read them.

  “So you have a new boyfriend,” Helga wrote. “Tell me more about him in your next letter. Mor wishes you would write more often. I know that you would rather talk on the phone. But long distance is expensive and you know that our mother squeezes every penny until it squeals like a baby pig.

  “I would love to come visit you, but now that the baby is here, travel is far more difficult. At least on the train it would be, and we have only one car between our families. The other died a lingering death and we can’t afford to replace it right now. I wish you would come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas this year.

  “Well, let me know how you two get along. Be careful about giving your heart away too quickly. Love from your big sister, who isn’t quite so big now, Helga.”

  So Dagmar was dating a new man. Keira slid that letter into the envelope and opened the next one, dated a month later. She read through it quickly down to the final paragraph. “I wish I could come meet this Sam. You make him sound like a real hero. I’ve heard it said that women are especially susceptible to men wearing a uniform.”

  Opening the third letter, Keira smiled when she read Sam’s name. So that was indeed his name. But this time there was only one line that caught and held her gaze. “You didn’t mention Sam. Are you still seeing him?”

  Keira was almost afraid to open the next l
etter. “What is going on with you? What do you mean you are crying all the time? What has happened? Send me your new phone number and I will call you. And no, I will not tell Mor. Your loving sister, Helga.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Hi, Lindsey.”

  “Hey, you want to go for hamburgers and catch a movie?”

  “I just got home from work.” Kirsten slid her feet into her favorite flip-flops and checked the mirror to see if her capris and a tee were okay.

  “I know. We haven’t even talked since graduation. What’s going on with you?”

  If you only knew. “Okay, what’s playing?”

  “Not sure, I’ll look it up. Are you sure you don’t need to check with José?”

  The sarcastic bite made Kirsten flinch. “No. I think he’s working late.” But then how would she know, she’d not talked with him since their argument in the park. “You driving?”

  “Mom said I could use the four-by-four. Will you be ready in an hour?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, don’t get too excited.”

  Kirsten rolled her eyes. “We’re only going for burgers and a movie, what do you expect?”

  “I expect a full report on all that’s been going on with you. And I’ll tell you my good news.”

  “What good news?”

  “Tell you when I see you.” A giggle and click.

  Kirsten flipped her cell closed and, after brushing both teeth and hair, made her way downstairs. “Mom?”

  “In here, working on the book.” The reply came from her mother’s lair.

  After checking the oven to see what smelled so good, she poured a glass of cold water out of the refrigerator pitcher and ambled to find her mother.

  Leah turned from her stacks of pictures and almost smiled. “Hi, how was your day?”

  “I addressed birthday cards for their clients. Did you know they send everyone a card on birthdays?”