The Silver Thread (40 page)

Annika mustered up the courage to follow Asbjorn into the kitchen. She saw Finn sitting at the large wooden kitchen table beside a ceramic bowl of red-tinged water, holding a damp cloth against the entire right side of his face. Anthea was packing up her surgical kit while her mother was making sandwiches.

Finn motioned for Annika to sit next to him while Asbjorn sat down with the children. She tried her best to push the conversation from the music room out of her head and took a seat right as Ambrose entered the kitchen through the heavy side door.

“I am fairly certain, of all the silver hair on my head
and
in my beard, only three strands are not from Talvi,” he announced, and strode up to Finn. “Let’s have a look at Anthea’s sewing job, shall we?”

Finn took the bloody cloth away from his face to reveal a ghastly, long cut along the edge his jaw, and another one running up his hairline. The stitches were neatly done, but the jagged wounds still looked painful and swollen.

“Your brother did a number on you, but your sister did a fine repair job,” Ambrose said, looking close at his oldest son’s face. “You likely won’t have much scarring, if you have any at all.” Finn dipped the cloth in the bowl of cool red water, wrung out the excess, and held it against the side of his head once again.

“Lucky me,” he muttered.

“You
are
lucky, Finn,” said Anthea with a disapproving frown, and went to help finish making the sandwiches. “Father, what did you do with Talvi?”

“I took him to dig a hole.”

This made Anthea and Finn laugh, but then he winced, pulling his stitches accidentally.

“Why is it so funny, to dig a hole?” Annika asked.

“It’s a punishment that Father used when we were adolescents, and he hasn’t done it in years,” Anthea explained. “He takes you out to the woods and leaves you there to dig for answers to your problems. You’re not allowed anything but a canteen of water and a shovel. You’re not even allowed to come back to the house. When he visits to check on your progress, if he’s not happy with what he finds, you have to keep digging. At least, that’s what I know of it. I never had to dig a hole, and Finn did not see much of it, either. It was mostly reserved for the twins’ bad behavior.”

“And that works?” asked Annika skeptically.

“It’s a simple, yet effective way for a hot-tempered lad or lass to burn off some steam,” Ambrose answered. “And you know what else helps?”

“Uh…no.”

“A dull shovel.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely,” Ambrose said to her. “A dull shovel makes it that much harder to dig with, so I gave Talvi the dullest, rustiest one I could find. And I was in such a hurry that I forgot to bring any water for him.”

Finn laughed again, and grimaced as he inadvertently pulled his stitches.

“Can I come out with you when you check on Talvi tomorrow?” he asked with a mean look in his eyes. “I’d like to fill the hole back in with him still in it.” Anthea gave Annika a
see what I mean?
glance as she brought over two plates piled with cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwich halves.

“Then you are no better than him,” his mother said in a tone that kept him from commenting any further.

Annika was glad to have the children around for a much needed distraction while she ate her sandwich. As she was finishing the last bit of her light dinner, she noticed that Finn had only taken one bite of his sandwich.

“Aren’t you hungry?” she asked, looking concerned. “You haven’t had a whole lot to eat over the past week. I’ve only seen you drink ginger ale and water.”

“It hurts my jaw to chew anything,” he said tersely, still holding the cloth against the side of his face. He took the bowl of water into his free hand as he got up from the table. “I’m just going to go lie down for a while.”

Annika sighed as she watched him leave the room, and reached for another half of a sandwich. Even when he was in a bad mood, he was still too nice for his own good.

“I feel so bad for him,” she said. “When my brother Charlie had his wisdom teeth pulled, he had to eat soft foods for a week. I made him chocolate pudding every day.” She looked over at Finn’s mother. “Do you have cornstarch and some cocoa?” Althea nodded with a warm smile, and Ambrose went to light a fire in the cast iron stove sitting beside the large hearth while she retrieved the different ingredients from the pantry and cabinets. “How about eggs and milk?” Annika asked as she took a clean bowl off a shelf and was handed a few measuring spoons.

“That’s such a kind and sweet thing of you to do for him,” Althea said as she placed a sauce pan on one of the stove burners. “You’re going to have to learn your way around our kitchen for when you come home for winter. The fires in the stove and the hearth never go out, and the cooking never seems to end, either.”

“Oh, well, Talvi and I haven’t really figured out a schedule yet,” she said, feeling a tiny bit nervous with her new mother-in-law. “Until last year, I’ve always spent Christmas with my family.”

“Then you ought to keep spending it with them,” Althea suggested in a gentle, but firm tone. “I can’t imagine how your mother’s heart ached when you were gone. You and Talvi can celebrate Christmas with your family, and then come here afterwards and celebrate Yule with us.”

“Aren’t those holidays at the same time?”

“Yule is actually a few days before Christmas, but I don’t think anybody here would complain about celebrating it twice.”

Asbjorn and Stella both smiled wide and shook their heads.

“I definitely wouldn’t mind doing that every year, if you want to keep your tradition with your family,” Ambrose said.

“I would mind,” Anthea joked. “I’ll never be able to leave the kitchen.”

“Yes you will,” her mother assured her. “You’ll have Annika and Talvi here to help. He’s not too bad in the kitchen, you know,” she said, looking at Annika.

“I find that hard to believe,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him cook. He stirred some risotto once, but Chivanni’s the one who made it. Usually he’s just hanging out, letting other people do all the work.”

“Yes, he does tend to believe his mere presence is inspiration enough, but he’ll help if you know how to ask,” said Althea with all the authority a mother would have regarding her child’s habits. “The thing about Talvi is that he wants to be the best at everything he sets his mind to. The trick is getting him to set his mind to what you want him to do.” She collected a drop of water from the pump in the sink and flicked it into the pan on the stove. It sizzled and she motioned to Annika that it was ready, then sat back down with the others.

Thirty minutes later, Annika carried a warm, covered dish down the hall and up the first flight of stairs to a landing, and saw that Finn’s door was closed. She knocked softly.

“Come in,” his deep voice answered.

She walked into the room lit by the colors of a gorgeous sunset, and shut the door behind her. He was lying in his bed, pulling out the stitches closest to his chin. She set the dish on his nightstand and sat down beside him.

“What are you doing?” she asked with concern. “That’s going to leave a scar if you do that.”

“I know it will,” he said. “That’s what I want.”

“That has got to hurt like hell,” said Annika, as he pulled out another stitch and let it fall to the floor.

“You know what really hurts?” he asked her, looking angry. “Lying crippled in bed all day, unable to sit up without help, just because it’s going to rain or snow, because your stupid little brother wanted to beat you at a game decades ago. At least now whenever he looks upon my face, he will remember what he tried to do to me today. He might finally learn something from his older, wiser brother.”

“I hope so, too, but I wish you would leave your stitches alone.”

“I wish you could have seen his face when I told him how gentle I was with you throughout your three days,” he said, surprising Annika by smirking exactly like Talvi always did. “It was absolutely priceless. You would have thought it was I who was holding the blade against
his
throat.”

“Yeah, it was a huge misunderstanding,” she pointed out. “But you’re both going to be fine.”

“I’m not so certain about that. It seems a pity that I have paid for a crime which I did not commit,” he said, smiling as cruelly as Talvi had on the airplane. He placed one warm hand on her knee, guiding it slowly up her thigh. “Perhaps I should send Cazadora to inform him that his wife is in my bed after all. Isn’t that why you’ve come to me now, so that I might justify my wounds?”

“Knock it off, Finn!” she gasped. She slapped his hand away and leapt to her feet. “I used to think you two were so different, but unless that’s the morphine talking, you’re a lot more alike than you know!”

“We
were
a lot alike, at one point in our lives,” he admitted, caressing the warm spot where she had been sitting. “Did you know that The Picture of Dorian Gray was inspired by the two of us?”

“You mean the book by Oscar Wilde?” she asked, and he had her full attention. She’d read the book a few years ago and remembered it was about a beautiful man who did terrible things, and those things were reflected in his portrait rather than on his handsome face. Either of the brothers could easily have starred in such a novel.

“Yes, we first met Oscar at a social club in London. I can’t recall how the introduction was made; it was such a blur of pixie dust and absinthe, of cards and men, of women and wine and song. We ran into him a few years later in an opium den, and he was so impressed with our level of carousing and the lack of wear and tear on our faces, that he wrote a story about it. I’ll bet you didn’t know this, but the first version was rejected by his publisher for being too indecent and immoral for the general public. He had to water it down considerably for it to be accepted, and even then, it still caused a great deal of scandal. Sometimes the truth is less believable than fiction.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Annika said, eyeing Finn cautiously from where she stood at his bedside. “I’m sure learning a lot more than I ever expected to about you Marinossian boys. Asbjorn told me what you said to Hilda, by the way.”

The cruel look left Finn’s face as he withdrew his hand from the blanket, and stared into his lap.

“That wasn’t something that you needed to know.”

“I guess Asbjorn thought differently. He had no problem going into detail about why you wanted me in this crazy family to begin with,” said Annika. “After all you and I went through, I’m surprised that you would try to hide this from me, like it’s something to be ashamed of.”

“Well, it needn’t be shouted from a mountaintop, either. I didn’t want you to misunderstand what I meant…or the manner in which I meant it,” Finn explained. “I certainly didn’t want to tell you after you made a comment about my body looking like a piece of art. You need to try a little harder to keep your private thoughts private, instead of overindulging in them. If you find yourself laden with inappropriate ruminations, you best push them into the corners of your mind, and don’t ever venture there again. Otherwise you’ll get us both into more trouble, if that’s even possible.” He raised a stern brow at her and she covered her embarrassed and blushing face with her hands. “Asbjorn is not only my sister’s husband; he’s also a very dear friend of mine, and I trust that he explained my standpoint accurately. I hold no expectations of you, Annika. I only want you to be happy being part of my family. All I desire from you is to see your face light up whenever you are here. I want to see it light up as often as I can. Perhaps we can one day share wine and desserts again, and I might try and watch one of your cult films and understand whatever it is that you see in them.”

“Well, I brought you a dessert, and we did watch
It
Came From Outer Space
, remember?” she said, smiling faintly at his sweet sincerity.

“I hardly remember anything about those three days after we opened Pandora’s box,
other than Nicolette giving me one hell of a scrub in the shower,” he said, and dipped his finger into the dish, humming in satisfaction as he tasted the warm pudding. He crawled out of his covers and walked over to the large desk in front of his even larger window that revealed a bright orange and purple twilight outside. He reached into a drawer and withdrew something small enough to conceal in his hand. “But that does remind me; speaking of things coming from outer space…” He stepped back over to the bed and sat on the edge near where she was standing.

“One of my astronomy students gave this to me as payment for tutoring, but it’s too small for my fingers. Perhaps it would fit one of yours? I noticed on your passport that your birthday is coming up soon, and I’ve little left to give you that you don’t already own.”

He opened his hand, and there on his palm lay a dark silver ring. It was simple and smooth, and when she picked it up to look closer, she saw uneven striations all over the band.

“What is it made out of?” she asked as she sat down beside him and tried to put it on her right middle finger. It was too small. Next she tried her pinky. It was too big. She slipped it onto her right ring finger and it fit perfectly, as if it had been created to rest exactly there.