The Number 7 Read online

  “Whatever you want, Lasse,” Gerhard replied, masking his disappointment. When he’d suggested the race, this wasn’t how he’d imagined it would be.

  “So, I’ll leave you here. Best of luck,” Lasse held out his hand.

  “I’ll see you at the finish,” Gerhard accepted his brother’s gesture.

  Lasse lifted his ski poles and pushed himself away into the crowd. Gerhard lost sight of him within seconds.

  All of Sälen grew silent as the minutes quickly counted down. Everything slowed down: Gerhard took deep, deliberate breaths and lifted his poles, ready to push off. Then the flags at the starting line lifted into the air, letting the skiers pass. The Vasaloppet had officially begun. Sixty-one kilometers into the race, Gerhard stopped to vomit. He pulled his skis to the side of the track and fell onto his side. He retched three times before dragging himself back to the course. Gerhard was tired and cold and wanted desperately to quit, but there was nowhere to go. He had to complete the race. It was dark when Gerhard arrived in Mora. He wanted to collapse; his muscles throbbed and felt like they would seize at any moment. He saw Leif waiting alone by the finish line. Where were the others?

  “Lasse came in forty minutes ago.” Leif took off his fur cap and put his arm around the elder twin. “You did well, son.”

  Gerhard was still catching his breath.

  “Everyone’s in the pub celebrating with him.”

  Gerhard’s hands shook as he tried to untie his skis, so Leif bent down to help him.

  “Did you plan it?”

  Gerhard looked at his father and for a moment neither man spoke. Leif’s eyes pleaded something to his son, but Gerhard didn’t know what it was. Did his father know the race had been a ruse? A distraction from the suffocating air back in Trelleborg?

  “Just don’t tell him,” Leif sighed as he lifted the skis onto his back before turning toward the town. “God knows how many times he’s fallen in your shadow. Just don’t tell him you let him win.”

  It was a lie, but Gerhard couldn’t bring himself to confess the truth. He had tried his best to win. He had raced and lost. Lasse had won on his own merit but Leif already believed otherwise, and Gerhard let him.

  XXII.

  Because Dad had already given Greta “The Thing” for Christmas, she wasn’t expecting to open any other gifts except the one from me. But Dad, being wonderfully true to form, presented her with a gift certificate to AutoParts for replacement headlights, floor mats, and other miscellaneous and unanticipated expenses that come with owning a car. Of course, I still had to pinch myself—that car would be mine in a short period of time.

  “You don’t get it until September when I leave for school!” Greta hissed at me, reading my hungry expression while she opened the gift certificate.

  “Jeez,” I answered. “Merry Christmas.”

  I handed her my wrapped gift, a small Mason jar filled with flowers I had collected and then dried from Mom’s funeral. I’d wanted to keep the jar for me, but I realized Greta needed it more than I did. She recognized the miniature yellow and white roses immediately.

  “Louisa, this is weird,” Greta admitted holding the jar up for Dad to see.

  I reached out to take the jar back, but Greta snatched it closer to her.

  “No. I’ll keep it,” she smiled and glanced at the clusters inside.

  As she turned it over, I spied the insides of her wrists still speckled with slivers of scabs. She saw my gaze, though, and pulled her sleeves to conceal her secret. No one saw them but me.

  The rest of the morning continued with a brief opening of gifts, breakfast in the living room with a fire in the fireplace, and the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas record playing on Grandma’s antique hi-fi. Greta lay sprawled on the couch, reading her new subscription to Vogue. Dad was absorbed in his gift from me, sitting in his usual armchair, his legs crossed. I’d bought him a random assortment of model train parts I found in an antique shop down the street from Fat Bottoms. Maybe I was inspired by Grandpa’s set in the cellar, or maybe I bought them because Dad deserved his own collection to complement his father’s. Either way, he appeared to like the gift and immediately began tinkering with the switch box. For a moment, I wished he’d been smoking a pipe, just because it would have completed the nostalgic Christmas family scene.

  As for me, I sat near the fire looking over my gift from Dad. He’d collected photos from the attic and pasted them into a shiny, new leather-bound album. He’d labeled everything. I turned page after page of pictures of Eloise and Gerhard. I saw photos of my father as he grew up. And at the back of the book he put snapshots of us. Not just the three of us, not just the family-pi. He’d included pictures of Mom. This album contained the family Dad never had. I couldn’t believe he was giving it to me. This was the most special, most thoughtful gift I’d ever received. Most shocking was that my Dad had been able to assemble it. I didn’t know he had it in him. Maybe he was braver than I thought.

  There was a soft tap at the door. Neither Dad nor Greta stirred from their vegetated states. Guess that means I’m getting the door. I picked myself up and walked to foyer, shuddering as I entered the mudroom—it was bitterly cold outside, and even my moccasins couldn’t protect my feet from the arctic floorboards.

  To my surprise, I found Chris out on the front step, hands in pockets, watching the road with his back turned to me. I opened the door.

  “Chris?”

  “Hey! Louisa!” He seemed nervous, looking over my shoulder into the house. “You want to hang out?”

  “Uh . . . You do know it’s Christmas morning, right?”

  For a brief moment, Chris looked surprised. “Oh, right. Hmm . . .” He shifted his weight anxiously.

  What was wrong with him?

  “My dad’s not a big Christmas person, so I often forget, you know?” Chris explained.

  I noticed how he pointedly didn’t mention his mom. He looked cold, and I knew I was freezing. The only thing I could think to say was, “You wanna come in?”

  “What? On Christmas morning?”

  I laughed. “Chris, you’re the one who came over here.”

  “Wouldn’t that be weird? With all your family and stuff?”

  Ah, so there was the source of his anxiety.

  “What? It’s just me, Greta—whom you’ve met—and my dad. It’s no big deal. Nothing’s open for us to go anywhere anyway. And I kind of want to hang out around here, you know?”

  It was true. I liked hanging out with my family-pi on Christmas just as much as I liked being with them on Thanksgiving. It was good for us to find each other after weeks of following our own paths in this new place. Of course Chris being here kind of mixed things up, but I was mildly curious to see my rugged friend interact with my family. I was similarly interested to see what Dad would think of Chris.

  We walked into the living room and neither Dad nor Greta looked up. Chris cleared his throat. That caught Dad’s attention immediately, and he was on his feet in an instant. Greta moved her magazine out of the way to witness the train wreck.

  “Dad, this is Chris.” Thank God, he’s not wearing holey jeans on Christmas morning. His hair hung loose, and he tucked the curls nervously behind his ears.

  Chris held out his hand, which Dad shook, though he was obviously surprised to meet this stranger on Christmas morning.

  “Hey, Chris. Merry Christmas! Do you and Lou go to school together?” Dad’s over-enthusiasm came off awkwardly. I silently hoped the weirdness didn’t last too much longer.

  “Yeah, we’re in History together.” Chris was doing a good job of keeping eye contact. I knew that was important to my father.

  “That’s cool,” Dad replied, again sounding uncomfortable. Thankfully, another knock at the door interrupted the conversation.

  “That must be Rosemary! I invited her over . . . ” Dad explained. He seemed grateful to escape the living room.

  “Hey, Greta!” Chris smiled over at my sister.

&nbs
p; She waved indifferently from behind her magazine. I could tell Chris got some satisfaction from the fact that Greta didn’t seem to like him. Perhaps he was more comfortable with the people who disliked him than with the people who did.

  Dad soon returned to the living room with his arm around Rosemary. While I wished her a Merry Christmas, Rosemary couldn’t take her eyes off Chris and I knew that she immediately recognized him as the Leo from my school project. I realized I didn’t even have to introduce him, but I did anyway.

  “Rosemary, this is Chris,” I smiled guiltily. “Chris, Rosemary.”

  “Nice to finally meet you,” Rosemary said holding out her hand. They shook.

  She didn’t once look at me, but I watched her assess Chris up and down, analyzing him with the same gaze she’d examined me with that first night in this house. I suddenly remembered those wide eyes and those bright white teeth.

  The record on the player had stopped spinning, so Dad went over to put on something else: Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” The opening strings made me shiver. This tune always made me feel creepy. Rosemary went to sit with Greta. The piano concerto was engrossing, and the scent of a new pot of vanilla chai tea drifting in through the kitchen seemed to be the remnant of a dream. I felt compelled to go and sit opposite my sister. She looked happy and sleepy, enveloped in the familiar music. Greta yawned. I wanted to stretch my limbs and lie next to her; I wanted to pretend we were young again. It was Chris, shifting his weight uncomfortably next to me, who snapped me back into reality.

  “Wanna go for a walk?” he asked hesitantly. I could tell he was afraid to wear out his welcome.

  “Sure,” I sighed, looking longingly back at the parlor as I followed Chris to the mudroom to fetch our coats. Outside, the sky looked like rain. I was beginning to learn how to identify snow clouds: They were thick, gray blankets, like gravy or cement. No texture. No billow. And true snow clouds smelled like metal, but I loved the scent because it was electric.

  But today, there would only be rain. The clouds were higher in the sky, darker and full figured. Beautiful in their own right, but they weren’t going to produce the white Christmas I’d come to expect while living in Pennsylvania these past two months. Had we really only been here two months? North Carolina seemed like a lifetime ago. And in a way, it was.

  Chris led me down October Hill Road past Rosemary’s cottage. I appreciated Chris’s relaxed personality. At one point we walked for five minutes in complete silence and both seemed comfortable and happy that way. When Chris spoke, he always spoke with purpose. Neither of us felt the need for idle chatter. We were both content to enjoy the moment quietly to ourselves.

  I started thinking about how different Chris and Gabe were, and how I liked them both. Gabe liked noise, mostly because he had a lot to say. And I didn’t mind because Gabe’s conversations were always so lively and energetic. At school, he’d talk endlessly about his future plans for his nursery or how he wanted to travel after high school or how much he loved working at the shop. He was exciting to listen to. He was infectious in all the right ways. His capacity to share life’s excitements was much greater than anyone I’d ever known. And then there was Chris. Chris, the guy I just couldn’t seem to get a hold on, but the one I wanted to.

  Chris and I reached a small footpath that led off the main road to an old covered wooden bridge. It was overgrown with ivy and clematis—dead from the winter’s bite—and the stream it once forged was gone. Dried up, disappeared forever. The wood was rotting in some places but held firm beneath us. It was once painted red. I was amazed that, in their boredom, local teens hadn’t used the bridge as a graffiti canvas.

  As if reading my thoughts, Chris answered, “You’ll be surprised how much respect Chester County kids have for our old relics. Must be something in the water.”

  “I can’t believe this thing is still standing.” I reached up to balance myself as I stepped onto a cinder block and up onto the bridge. It was dark, but light filtered in through holes in the roof and gaps between the planks.

  “Kind of cool to think George Washington could have walked this bridge or ridden over it on his horse,” Chris remarked as he pulled himself up next to me.

  “Or Paul Revere.”

  “Paul Revere was up in Boston, Louisa,” Chris chuckled at my expense. I shoved him playfully, embarrassed.

  “Over by the Brandywine Battlefield is the Ring House, which Washington used as his command post before the battle in 1777. I’ll take you sometime,” Chris took a seat on the end of the bridge facing the road, dangling his feet off the edge.

  “I’d like that.”

  I joined him. The bridge was cold beneath me; I shivered and sat on my mittened hands to keep my bottom warm. Chris put his arm around me, hesitantly. He smelled good like aftershave, but his chin remained rough with patches of scruff. It felt nice to be near Chris. I thought about Gabe. What would he think if he could see me now? But we weren’t dating . . . were we?

  “I’m sorry about this morning,” he apologized. “Like I told you, my dad’s not much of a Christmas person. My mom used to be the one to put up all the decorations, hunt for the perfect tree, and plan the dinner. All of that.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Divorced and remarried. Living in Jacksonville with a new family. New husband. New house. New kids. She doesn’t like us much.”

  Chris stared out to the road. I reached into my back pocket for the folded pages of my memories of Mom. Tentatively, I pulled the packet out and handed it to my friend.

  “It’s my third copy. I carry it around all the time, so it usually gets pretty beat up.”

  I watched as Chris opened the pages and read the title, scrawled at the top: “Memories of Mom.”

  “When I was ten, Greta twelve,” I began, “Mom was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer. She died seven months later, after nonstop chemo, a double mastectomy, and radiation treatments. I watched my mom lose weight, her hair, and her breasts. When she finally lost her life, I hated myself for being selfish enough to wish she could have lived through the pain for me. I hated my dad for not stopping it, and I hated the doctors for not discovering the cancer sooner. Sometimes I hated her for giving up. I harbored a lot of hate,” I confessed, ashamed. Never had I admitted to the anger before. Not to Dad, not to Greta, not even to the therapist Dad took us to after Mom’s death. I didn’t know why I confessed it now to Chris.

  “I hated my mom too,” he responded. “I hated her for destroying my dad. I hated her new husband. Hell, I even hated her new dog.” Chris’s body was tense. The hand that clutched my papers was balled into a fist, and I could tell he was close to shutting down.

  “It’s a hard thing to deal with at any age,” I said softly. “But especially when you’re a child, and especially when it’s your mom. I know,” I gently took the papers back from my friend, took his hand in mine, and looked over my memories for the millionth time. Chris stayed quiet but didn’t let go of me. I wasn’t used to being the one comforting.

  “This one, memory 212, is one of my favorites.” I nervously leaned my head into the curve of Chris’s shoulder. I was used to people fussing over me even though it was something I hated. I didn’t want to fuss over Chris, but I didn’t want to sidestep his emotions, either.

  “Memory 212: Mom learned to play the ukulele and especially loved playing ‘Across the Universe’ on the little stringed instrument.”

  “We played it at her funeral,” I informed Chris. “Oh, and this one, memory 230: Blamed Yoko Ono for breaking up the Beatles. She never forgave Lennon for that one.” I smiled, conjuring up another memory. “She called my dad ‘JoJo’ because she loved ‘Get Back’ so much. It was her favorite Beatles song.”

  “What memory is that?”

  “One hundred.”

  “What’s your last memory?” Chris continued staring at the road, letting me lean against him.

  “Five hundred and twenty-two,” I shuffled to the last
page, embarrassed I couldn’t remember. “She called me ‘mon petit chou chou.’ She made me promise to never forget it.”

  “Mon petit chou chou?” Chris asked, seeming amused.

  “My little cabbage,” I translated. “But I don’t let anyone else call me that.”

  “So what about Rosemary?” Chris finally turned to look at me.

  “What about her?”

  “Are you okay with her? She and your dad acted pretty comfortable in there.”

  “I’ve gotten to the point where I want my dad to be happy. Obviously, I don’t want him to forget my mom—as if he ever could. But, just because he loved my mom doesn’t mean he has to be alone for the rest of his life. And Rosemary’s nice. She adds something. I think it’s refreshing.”

  “You know, Lou,” he kissed my forehead, the scruff of his beard itching my face; it was an honest kiss and his lips were warm on my cold skin. “You’re very wise.”

  “And you’re not as tough as you seem,” I added.

  He scoffed, but rolled up the cuff of his coat, exposing the black tattoo on his left arm. “After my mom left, I toughened up. I didn’t want to be happy because I didn’t think I deserved to be happy. So I kind of fell into a depression, and Dad freaked out because it was too much for him to deal with. So he sent me away. Every summer I went to camp for unstable kids,” Chris chuckled sarcastically. “Anyway, last summer Dad sent me to Colorado. One of those tough-love camps he thought would get me ‘motivated to do something with my life,’” Chris said, channeling his father. “I spent the summer blazing trails in the Rockies. It was hard work: cutting down trees, digging trenches, sleeping outdoors under the stars, eating red beans and rice every day. But I loved it, Lou. I loved being out in the wild, working with my hands. It got to be a spiritual thing for all of us, working as one tribe in nature. We were the only ones out there for hundreds of miles. The leaders encouraged us to associate ourselves with something natural, like a tree, element, or animal.”

  “You’re a turtle?” I ran my bare thumb over his tattooed wrist and it sent an electric current through my spine. The touch was intimate. This place, the setting. Chris had a way of making every moment close, personal, and sensual.