Page 150 of Top Shelf

The sky is wide and pale blue, and Heidi pauses at the edge of the terrace. I feel the tension in her hand as she takes it in.

“Wow.”

“Too much?” I ask quietly.

“Yes.” She lets out a breath. “But not bad too much,” she adds quickly, as though she’s scared I might take it all back. “Just… a lot.”

With a nod, my eyes catch on my mother placing candles near the arch, at Freja fixing Alice’s crown, at my father carrying another bench because Mamma decided the garden lawn must fit everyone in the vicinity of Södermanland. Ebba sits beneath the shade of the old apple tree with a blanket over her knees, pretending she’s supervising.

“It is a lot,” I agree.

Heidi nudges me softly. “You grew up inside all this.”

“Sometimes I hid in the boathouse.”

She hums. “Healthy coping mechanism.”

“It had snacks.”

Her laugh comes out softer than usual, and then her fingers tighten around mine. “Viktor… I don’t wanna mess this up.”

“You will not.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Yes, min fru,” I say, looking at her with my grandmother’s ring on her hand and cornflowers in her hair. “I can.”

Her mouth parts a little, but before she can answer, my mother sees us and presses both hands to her chest with a gasp, as though the sight has happily wounded her.

“Heidi,” she calls. “Oh, the flowers. Viktor, look at your wife.”

“I am looking,” I reply, eyes only on her.

Always on her.

Freja hears and makes an obscene gagging noise behind her flowers, and Ebba lifts her coffee cup to hide her chuckle. Heidi’s cheeks turn pink, but she doesn’t shy away from any of it.

The blessing begins when the sun is still high enough to turn the lake silver. It is not a wedding. I tell myself this while my father stands near the arch, while my mother fusses with the ribbon, while my sister hands Heidi a small bouquet of wildflowers from the meadow and tells her she has to hold it correctly because photographs are forever. We are already married. This is only family. Only tradition. Only a few words spoken over something legally signed months ago.

But Heidi steps beside me beneath the birch arch, and the thoughts turn to ash.

She looks out at my family with her shoulders straight and her chin lifted, but her hand finds mine at the side of her skirt. I take it, and her fingers slide between mine, my grandmother’s ring brushing my skin.

Ebba watches from the front row, and I know what she sees.

My mother speaks first in Swedish, slowly enough for Heidi to follow almost none of it, but I can feel her focused attention beside me. Mamma talks about Solvik and summer light, about family being something we build and tend to, about love needing witnesses because even private things deserve to be held by the love around us. Her voice shakes only once, when she mentions Farfar.

Heidi’s thumb moves against mine, and I breathe. Freja reads next, in English.

“To be welcomed here,” Freja says, eyes bright as she looks at Heidi, “is to be fed too much, asked too many questions, and eventually given a task whether you understand it or not. It’s also to be defended badly by people with strong opinions.”

Heidi makes a small sound beside me, almost a laugh, and Freja smiles at her.

“You came to us quickly, Heidi. We know this. But some people arrive like weather, and suddenly the house has more sunshine. So we are very happy you are here.”

Heidi’s fingers tighten in mine again, but I do not look at her because if I do, I may not survive my sister becoming poetic without warning. Luckily I am distracted when Mamma brings the ribbon.

It is blue and white, a soft fabric braided with a narrow strand of green. I stare at it, transported back to a time months ago, on the first day in our temporary apartment, when Heidi crouched beside her sparkly pink lamp and told me I could leave signed divorce papers on her studio desk with a bow as an opening gift. I promised her I would choose a tasteful ribbon.