Page 19 of The Christmas Book Flood

Which was why Anders nearly dropped the spatula when his brother sagged against the workbench and let out a long sigh. “I really put my foot in it this time.”

Play it cool, he told himself. Don’t scare him away. He turned down the heat on the stove—no wonder one side had burned, but no way had it cooked through yet—and kept his gaze on the pan instead of Dalmar’s face. “What happened?”

Even so, he caught his brother’s wince in his peripheral vision. “Garri, he... he came home from school—last day before break, you know—all excited. The school had been holding a contest. Short stories—Christmas stories. His won. Not just his class or his grade, but out of the whole school.”

Well he couldn’t not look over at that news, any more than he could restrain his smile. “That’s wonderful! He must have been so proud of himself.”

Dalmar, he couldn’t help but notice, winced again. “Yeah... he was. And his mother was.” He fell silent.

It said plenty. Anders gusted out a breath. “Dalmar. What did you say?”

His brother straightened, contrition turning into anger on his face.

Ah, this was the Dalmar he knew. He waved a brawny arm.

“What was I supposed to say? The boy is ten years old—ten! And already, he’s too smart, too clever.

Ten years old, and I don’t know what he’s talking about half the time.

Bad enough I have to feel the idiot around you , but my own boy? ”

“Wait, you...?” Anders turned the stove down a bit more so that he could turn to face Dalmar fully. “You are not an idiot , you idiot.” Yes, he heard himself. “Other than when you act this way. Where do you think Garri got his intelligence?”

“From you !” He roared it like an accusation.

Not that it was that sort of accusation.

Anders rolled his eyes. “We’re a clever family—all of us.

We just focus it on different things. I like words.

Ulric likes numbers. Ram likes nature. You like machines.

If you don’t understand what I say half the time, we’re even.

When you ramble on about engines, my eyes glaze over.

So stop being a coward and let your son be who he wants to be. ”

Dalmar went still. Well, other than that pulsing vein in his temple. “What did you just call me?”

Anders smiled, even though he knew very well it would infuriate his brother.

Always had, always would. “If you don’t want to be called a coward, stop acting like one.

You can brave the fiercest storm, the wiliest rival—you don’t even cower at the thought of German U-boats!

But the thought of your son being more like me than you?

That terrifies you.” He added a dollop of butter to the pan and then put on the lid.

Faced the giant down. Lifted his chin. “Is it such a bad thing, Dal? To be like me? Do you hate me so much?”

He expected a roar. A sneer. An insult. Instead, his brother deflated, going so far as to sink onto one of the chairs that he always dwarfed. “Now you’re being an idiot. I’m prouder of you than—I don’t know. You’d have the words, but I don’t, and that’s the irony of the thing.”

“See there?” He pointed. “You know what irony is. Three points. Idiots wouldn’t know that.”

Was that actually a breath of laughter that puffed from his lips, or another grunt?

Hard to tell, sometimes, with Dalmar. He reached up and rubbed at that bulging vein in his temple.

“I don’t know how to be a father to him.

” His voice had gone soft, low, uncertain.

“Apparently I’ve done a lousy-enough job being a brother to you, if you honestly think I don’t crow over your every book to everyone I know.

The teasing, the prodding, the insults—those work with Ul and Ram.

They work with Johann and Hans,” he said of Garri’s younger brothers.

“I know how to talk to them about the things they care about. But Garri? He comes home talking about books I’ve never even heard of.

About scientific stuff that means nothing to me. About art .”

On another day, in another conversation, the way he sneered art would have made Anders bristle. But just now, it made him choke on a laugh. “Not art . The horror.”

Dalmar crossed beefy arms over his chest. And glared. “And Mother says you don’t play with insults like the rest of us.”

His lips twitched. “I lean more to the sarcastic. It’s never been her forte. She excels at the outright insult and has even honed her skill at the more subtle art of the backhanded insult. But sarcasm... she’s never gained a taste for it.”

“You were adopted,” Dalmar grunted.

Anders snorted at the decades-old taunt. “I’m the spitting image of Father.”

Dalmar’s mouth twitched much like Anders’s had just done. “He was adopted too.”

He laughed—he couldn’t help it. Then he sighed and leaned against the workbench.

“Dal—you don’t have to understand everything he likes.

You don’t have to understand him . You just have to accept him.

Accept that he can love you and look up to you without wanting to follow in your footsteps.

I promise you, that boy doesn’t think you’re an idiot.

What he thinks you are is a hero—the one person in the world he most wants to please, and the one person he fears he never will. ”

Heaving a sigh, Dalmar leaned forward until he’d rested his elbows on his knees, then dropped his head into his hands.

He sat that way for a long moment, and Anders said nothing.

Just let him think. When the aroma of butter-seared fish met his nose, he turned around, checked on the food, and turned off the stove.

He put the least-burnt pieces onto a plate and set it on the table in front of Dalmar.

His brother straightened, but he didn’t turn toward the plate.

“I don’t think... I don’t think you know what it feels like, to have someone you love so much, someone you have such hopes for, say that what you do, what you’ve chosen, who you are isn’t good enough. ”

Anders frowned. “I know exactly how that feels.”

But his brother was shaking his head. “You don’t.

You can’t. Our family—we’ve always been fishermen, Anders.

All of us. Every grandfather, every uncle, every cousin, every brother.

Until you . You had to go to university.

You had to write books. You had to draw and paint and.

.. and don’t you see what that felt like to the rest of us?

Like you were saying the lives we’d all lived for generations weren’t good enough for you. You needed more .”

His throat went tight. “Not more—just different. Don’t you think it was torture for me, feeling as though I never fit in?

That no matter how I tried, I couldn’t conform myself to the mold I should have fit?

” He got a glass down from the cupboard and pulled the bottle of milk from the icebox—Dalmar always liked milk with his dinner.

“I wanted to be good at the same things the rest of you were. I wanted to make you all proud, not be the runt of the litter you were ashamed to even claim.”

“We were never ashamed of you.” Dalmar let his hand fall to the table, rattling the plate.

Anders put the glass beside it and fished cutlery from the drawer. “You hung a sign around my neck when I was six that said Brother for Sale .”

Another twitch of his lips. “That was nothing personal, I did it to Ul and Ram too. As if any of the neighbors would take them. You, now—I had a couple good offers. Aron Frithricksson would have traded me his new wagon for you, so you could help him with his schoolwork.”

Having nothing else to occupy his hands, Anders sat in the other chair, laughing. “Aron— he was an idiot.”

“And I, loving brother that I am, decided not to make the deal. See? You owe me.” He picked up the fork but just stared at his half-burned dinner.

“It’s hard, Anders. Working day in and day out, just finally making enough to buy a few luxuries now that the Americans are importing our catches.

While you sit at a desk and just... be smart all day, and make more than all of us combined.

It’s hard not to feel like I’m letting down our mother, Kristin, the children. ”

“Dalmar—”

“Then Garri.” Dalmar shook his head. “He’s so like you.

And I look at him, and I think, He got it.

My brother got it. Why didn’t I? Why did it just.

.. pass right through me? To him? And I worry that I won’t be able to do right by him.

I can’t send him to university, Anders, there’s no way.

All I have to offer him is the fishing boat.

But it’s not going to be good enough for him. I know it’s not, and...”

And that would hurt. Just like feeling forced into a life that didn’t fit hurt.

Anders drew in a long breath. “Dalmar, you’re exactly who you were meant to be.

And God gave you the children he did because he knew he could trust you to be their father.

You don’t need to give more than you’re able.

All you need to do is encourage Garri to be who God created him to be.

Perhaps he’ll decide to run the boat—or perhaps he’ll leave it to Johann and Hans and try something different.

If he wants to go to university, he can get scholarships, like I did.

Just... don’t let him go, thinking you’re not proud of him.

Don’t let him feel like a failure, like you only value the things he’s not good at. ”

Dalmar cut a bite of fish with his fork but didn’t raise it to his lips. “What if I try... and still I can’t be what he needs? What then?”