Page 33 of A Curse for the Homesick

THE DELTA

2022

When I woke up two days later, I looked in the mirror and found nothing on my forehead. No mark. Like it had never existed at all.

We emerged from Ramna Skaill when the sky was still black. It reminded me of early-morning swim practices as a kid, when I’d waited just inside the doors to the pool for my dad’s car to cut a warm glow through the darkness.

He parked in the dirt lot and stepped out. I shouldered my duffel bag and glanced up at him, nervous at first. He smiled cautiously back at me. My bag slid to the ground and I hugged him, and when he hugged me back, I could smell coffee and motor oil on his shirt.

In the car, I told him about the plane tickets to London and how I was maybe thinking of trying to get a job there. I told him about Noah and ending things and how my mum had offered to go move my stuff out of the apartment in case I couldn’t bear to. I didn’t tell him about Henrik because he already knew.

When we got back to the house, I found a mug just waiting to be filled and pancake batter at the ready beside the stove. My dad shyly handed me the mug, and I started crying before I could help it.

“I’m sorry about Anna,” I said.

He put his arms around me and pulled me into his chest. I stood with the mug curled in my hands and my shoulders at my ears. “How is that your fault?” he asked.

“I’m sorry it happened. I’m sorry I wasn’t with you.”

“Oh, Tessie,” he said. “I’m so sorry I made you grow up here.”

It wasn’t the reason I was crying, but I didn’t know how to describe what was.

* * *

At the funeral, I ended up sitting with Linnea on one side and Soren on the other. The pews were hard and unforgiving. It was snowing outside, so someone had turned the radiators so high I felt sweat beading down the back of my neck. Soren sat very still, and when my thigh accidentally touched his, he let it stay there for one, two, three seconds before shifting away, just long enough that he could pretend he wasn’t flinching at my touch. He had a book in his lap, cover-side down, and his hands rested protectively across it.

Father Andersson stood behind the pulpit and told us about hope and courage and everlasting love. My mouth tasted metallic, like I had a cut in my throat and kept swallowing the blood. In the back of the church, a child started to cry; I thought it was Henrik’s nephew.

Henrik’s parents both spoke. His father looked exactly like him, just bigger. When he said that Henrik was the kindest boy anyone had ever met, he said it angrily, like he was waiting for someone to contradict him. Henrik’s mother swayed, tipsy, as she tried to recount some story about a tenth birthday, when Henrik and Soren had accidentally broken a window in this very church with a soccer ball, but she never got to the end of the story. Henrik’s father had to go back up there to help her down. Beside me, Soren let out a tiny, strangled breath. That was the first noise I heard him make all day.

When it was Linnea’s turn, she stood and closed her hands into fists, like she was going into battle. She hadn’t owned any black, not a single item, so we’d had to go out to buy a dress. It was lacy and fluttery and long-sleeved. When I’d tried to pay for it, the woman at the counter wouldn’t let me.

“Everyone always tells you not to fall in love when you’re too young,” Linnea said. Her voice echoed into the rafters. Henrik’s nephew had been taken outside, but I could still hear his cries through the door. “And if you do, not to take it too seriously because it probably won’t last. But I’m going to love Henrik for the rest of my life.”

Soren took a breath through his nose. I tried to swallow and couldn’t. In my peripheral vision, I could see his profile: jaw, mouth, eyelashes.

“I read a lot of romance books in the keep,” Linnea said. “Most of them have this part at the end, an epilogue, so you can see they’re still happy and in love ten years in the future.” She inhaled. “But I don’t think people have to be together forever for their love to mean something.”

I had to stare with all my focus at Linnea’s hands, wrapped around the pulpit, to keep from turning my head. My eyes were burning, but I just kept facing forward, blinking and blinking.

At the end, Linnea said that Henrik’s best friend was going to read something from Downwelling. Soren got up, and Linnea hugged him and whispered something in his ear before she sat. He was lit around the edges, tinged gold from all the candles. It was the same suit he’d worn to the rehearsal dinner. When he swallowed, I could see the movement of his throat.

He gave no introduction. Just opened the book and read: “‘The sorrow and the joy his brother had brought him seemed then of equal value. If he had not felt such pain, he would not have felt so human. There, among the young willows drooped with mourning, he felt a clarity he had never known. The stuff of life is what other people make us feel.’”

For the first time since we’d entered the church, Soren looked at me, and once he did, he didn’t look anywhere else. I had a sense of falling from a catastrophic height. I was sure then that everyone in every pew knew the truth: that I loved him, would always love him, would never let him love me back for fear of what I might do to him.

“‘He had always imagined,’” Soren said, eyes still on mine, “‘that the difference between two people was a chasm to be crossed. Now he realized it was not a chasm but a precious entity unto itself. There is no endeavor more human than the tender examination of the delta between two souls. There is no endeavor more human than sympathy.’”

He sat back down. Father Andersson finished the service. When it was over, Linnea stood stiffly at the front of the room. Saffi wound an arm around her waist, holding and propping her both. Saffi and I nodded at each other, trying to smile for the sake of showing we didn’t dislike each other but not quite getting there on account of the shittiness of the day.

“I hope you like London,” Saffi told Linnea. “I hope you let yourself have fun.”

Linnea said of course, a little quietly, her gaze and head elsewhere. My dad came over to hug me sideways and tell me we should think about getting to the airport soon. We’d booked our flights for the evening of the funeral, thinking that it would be good to have something to do, but now it felt like a mistake. It felt cruel to leave so soon.

Soren took a step toward us, and Saffi set her hand gently on his elbow. I told Linnea I needed some water, and would she be okay for a minute? She nodded. Soren’s gaze moved to meet mine, and I pushed through the door into the hall.

In one of the bathroom stalls, Kitty was sobbing. I knew it was her because I recognized her shoes. She didn’t open the door, so I crawled under it and found her sitting on the lid with her elbows on her knees.

“Don’t tell Linnea” was the first thing she said.

I put a hand on her back.

“I don’t want her to think I’m trying to make it about me,” Kitty said.

“She wouldn’t think that.” I handed her clumps of balled-up toilet paper until she was done crying.

“I need five more minutes,” she said. “Can I just—Sorry.”

I kissed the top of her head and stepped back into the hallway alone.

“Tess?” a voice said behind me.

I turned. Lukas. I wiped my eyes, but he just gave me this smile like—no, why bother—and I let my hands drop.

“Can I give you a hug?” he asked.

I nodded, and he wrapped his arms around me. I pressed my face into his lapel, and I tried not to make any noise, but my breath came out slow and shuddering.

“Hey, hey,” Lukas said, smoothing my hair. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

“Sorry,” I whispered.

He was so much taller than me. Since when? I wanted to go back: to the Fells’ kitchen, to Lukas lying on the couch and Soren at the stove and Kitty perched on the edge of the table, to Henrik and Linnea all tangled together. I wouldn’t even need to be there. I just wanted to go back long enough to see them. Look through the window. Prove it was real.

“You’re going to miss your flight,” Lukas said.

“Yeah.”

“I was thinking of visiting,” he said. “If you ever need a friend in California.”

I supposed, this close to the flight, it didn’t matter anymore if I told him, so I said: “I might not be there. I thought I could stay with Kitty and Linnea for a while.”

“In London?” Lukas asked. “What about Noah?”

I leaned my forehead against his shoulder and didn’t say anything. When he spoke, I could feel the words echo in his chest. “He’s not—He understands what happened here, right? I haven’t heard you say anything about him in…” A pause. “Did he break up with you? Did you break up with him? Does Soren know?”

“You can’t tell him.”

“Why not?”

“Not until I leave.”

“Tess—”

“I didn’t want him to worry that I broke up with Noah because I thought he and I would…”

“End up together?” Lukas said. “Everyone has always thought that. I have always thought that. I thought I was in love with you for about six months, and even then, I still thought that.”

“You thought you were in love with me?”

“Forever ago.”

“You never told me.”

“Of course I never told you,” Lukas said. “You should’ve said something when you broke up with Noah.”

“I didn’t want to make Saffi uncomfortable.”

“Not sure it would’ve made much of a difference,” Lukas said. “They ended things the first day of skeld season, as soon as Linnea moved the wedding.”

“They didn’t,” I said.

“Yes, they did.”

“I just saw them together.”

“Doing what? Talking?”

“They didn’t,” I said again.

“Tess.”

Lukas watched me. I opened my mouth—no sound came out—then swallowed.

“You have to tell him,” he said. “God, before you leave, you have to tell him.”

“I can’t.”

“Why? Give me one good reason.”

I gestured helplessly at the stone walls of the church. At the windows and the snow. At the sea and the wind and at Stenland.

“We’ve tried, Lukas. So many times. I don’t—I can’t do it to him again.”

“Then just stay! Tess, I know being in Stenland can feel like being trapped at the end of the world. Jesus Christ, I get it. But it’s not all that. Would it really be the worst thing? To stay?”

Jesus Christ, he got it, Tess, obviously. I knew this from his emails, which I always read, perhaps multiple times, when I had a nightmare or over coffee before Noah was awake. I read about the bloody sheep getting stuck in the mud; the cruise ships lumbering into the harbor and belching daft passengers across Lundwall; losing at darts in the pub; Soren’s birthday; a hike to the bottom of the gorge with a whiskey toast to keep warm; the New Year’s soccer match, played on the snow in the middle of the road because no one was driving; the smell of a peat fire. I tripped on a Pictish stone and landed in a bog; Linnea told the worst joke; I saw your dad buying coffee; Soren is currently feeding a lamb milk from a bottle in front of the fire because it’s too small and it won’t survive otherwise; you wouldn’t believe how cold it is; you wouldn’t believe how windy it is; you must feel so lucky to be somewhere else.

I pressed my eyes shut. “What if he ends up like Henrik?”

Quietly, Lukas said: “Oh, Tess.”

“Neither of us even wanted the other to know we were single. He and I both know we can’t try this again if we’re just going to…”

“Hurt each other? Because, no offense, but you two are pretty good at that even when you’re on opposite sides of the world.”

I looked down at my feet, pressing my chin to my chest. “I know.”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant—why did you end things with Noah? Don’t tell me it wasn’t for Soren. I won’t believe you.”

“It wasn’t for him,” I said. “It was because I can’t keep dating people I just end up comparing to him. I know we’re not going to be together. But I can’t just pretend I don’t want to feel like that with—someone.”

Lukas studied me. Finally, he just nodded and wiped my cheekbone with the side of his thumb.

“Let’s meet in London, then? And you can visit me in France?”

I nodded.

“I’ll email you,” he promised.

“Okay.”

Through the frosted window, the snow was starting to flurry. Already the sun had slipped toward the horizon, edging the island into indigo night. The waves were as big as they ever were, crashing again and again against the snow-patterned shore. I had to get to the airport. I really did want to leave—of course I wanted to leave. Because: this place, this place, this place —

A door creaked, and over Lukas’s shoulder, I saw Soren step into the hall. His tie was undone and loose around his neck. He pressed his lips together at the sight of us, not a smile, but sort of like he was trying.

“Hey,” Lukas said.

Soren nodded and leaned his head against the wall.

I stepped away from Lukas. His hands dropped to his sides.

“I should go,” I said.

I had to turn sideways to get past Soren, and the goodbye stuck in my throat because it seemed too small for something so large. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw Lukas speaking urgently and Soren opening his mouth, watching me go, maybe also knowing that goodbye was too small but everything else was agony even if it was true.

I thought of Soren lying in my bed years ago, telling me he could not find the words to describe the thing he felt, but that he kept searching for them in Stennish. Maybe that was what I was missing. I could not explain the duration of my love or the depths of my fear; maybe the words only existed in a language we had lost.

In the end, how else would the two of us have left it, really? Saying: nothing. Meaning: everything.