Page 140 of Top Shelf

“You taught me not to lie to you.”

“Ah. You remember one thing.”

My lips twitch, and I follow her gaze through the door to Heidi. Vera has placed a second flower behind Heidi’s ear. It is crooked, but Heidi has not moved it. She is listening to Alice with elbows on the table, coffee forgotten between her hands as Hugo lines up sticks beside her plate.

She looks exhausted. Overwhelmed. And somehow, she looks so right there. The thought moves through me with enough force that I have to close my hand around the coffee cup I am holding.

“She is lovely,” Ebba says quietly.

“She is.”

“And not stupid.”

“No.”

“And not as temporary as you thought.”

My body goes still, and Ebba sips her coffee as though she’s said nothing at all. At the table, Heidi laughs, but I cannot hear what caused it. My pulse has moved into my throat with old, familiar dread. Ebba held my face when I was small enough to fit in her lap. She knew when I lied about breaking the greenhouse window. She knew when I was homesick in my first year in America and when I came home after my injury, pretending I wasn’t in pain.

Now it is clear she doesn’t believe the lie I told my family—that we were already dating and in love before the courthouse. And it appears she also knows the lie has started to rot around the truth.

“We are married,” I say.

“Yes.” Her gaze remains on Heidi. “You managed that part.”

I look down at her. “Mormor.”

“You brought home a woman for a legal reason,” she says, quiet enough that no one else hears. “This is not what I would have chosen for you.”

The words should cut, but they don’t. Ebba does not waste cruelty. If she says a thing, it is because she believes a wound needs to be opened and cleaned before it can be stitched to heal.

“But she looks at the house as if she sees it… And she looks at you as if she is trying not to.” Ebba finally turns her sharp blue eyes on me. “And you look at her as if she’s taken your heart and you are standing here wondering whether she noticed.”

I say nothing. There is no point.

Her face softens as her eyes trail over my face. “The marriage may have begun for legal reasons, Viktor. That does not mean you must keep lying about what it has become.”

My throat feels tight, and I look back at Heidi, who’s now listening very seriously as Hugo shows her his stick collection.

“I do not want to trap her,” I say.

“No.” Ebba’s mouth presses into a thin line. “You are afraid that if you tell her the truth, she will feel cornered by your wanting.”

I sigh, nodding slowly. Heidi chose to sign the marriage contract. She chose my bed and my hands and my mouth. My home, for this trip, because the agreement required it and because she is braver than she thinks.

She has not chosen forever.

She has not chosen mornings in Denver and summers here. She has not chosen my mother’s homemade meals, my grandmother’s opinions, my family’s noise and my grief, my stubbornness, the whole of me after the contract has expired.

But I want her to choose all of it so badly I can barely stand in my own body.

“I have already chosen what I want,” I admit. “Now I am waiting for her to choose.”

Ebba’s gaze sharpens. “Has she been offered the choice?”

I look at my grandmother, and she holds my gaze, sharp and steady and impossible to escape. My chest pulls tight, and across the kitchen table, Heidi smiles at Hugo speaking, but her eyes flick back to me before she turns away. She does this now. She notices when something shifts in me, and she reaches without making a show of reaching. And every time, I want to keep her hand there.

I want to keep her.