Picking up her cup of water, Tatiana took a sipand smiled. “We tell stories of legends not because we believe they happened as they’re told, but because they can teach us something true about ourselves and where we came from. The very fact that we now value things our ancestors didn’t helps us understandwhythose values have changed. Plus,” she added with a wink for Elea, “they’re good fun. Aren’t they?”
“Like the Yule Lads.” Elea grinned. “Pottasleikir is coming tomorrow morning. I told Aunt Tatta she had better leave her dishes unwashed so he can lick the pots clean. Anders’s little felt troll set has one holding a pot for Pottasleikir.”
Their cousin’s brows went up. “Anders has little felt Yule Lads?”
“In his office,” Elea confirmed with a nod.
“How... whimsical.” Camilla said it as though it were the highest compliment one could pay to a man.
And she had a point. The fact that he brought in the trolls for Christmas, that he had painted a picture of his kitten, that he spent time thinking up ways to make the old legends accessible to today’s children were some of the things she loved about him.
Liked. Things shelikedabout him. A few dozen letters over the course of a year could not make one fallin love with someone, especially when that someone thought he was corresponding with a man.
“He’s been so nice.” Elea’s face was as bright as the summer sun. She leaned close to their cousin and stage-whispered, “I think it’s for Aunt Tatta. I think helikesher.”
Tatiana choked on the sip of water she’d just taken, coughing into her hand and regretting it as countless eyes turned her way.
“Are you all right, Tatta?” Camilla patted her on the back, concern in her voice.
Elea, the little imp, just grinned. “I think she likes him too.”
“Hush,” Tatiana barely managed to squeak out around another ridiculous cough. She tried to wave away the attention with a hand and a grin, assuring her colleagues that she was fine—if foolish. A few more coughs and throat clearings and she had it mostly under control. Elea and Camilla were both staring at her, expectation etched into their expressions. Clearly they had no intention of letting her off the hook just because of a little thing like breathing in fluid. “OfcourseI like him,” she said quietly. “He’s an admirable man, one I respect immensely. And he is merely kindand thoughtful. It isn’t that he thinks of me in any special way.”
Camilla drew her bottom lip between her teeth, but it did little to hold back her smile.
Elea didn’t bother trying. “He watches you all the time. And always finds an excuse to be wherever you are.”
“Nonsense. We work together, that’s all. And he’s keeping tabs on me right now only because ofyou, Elea.” That was all—it must be. They’d been working together for five years, after all, and he’d never so much as asked her to dinner. And why would he? He was one of the most brilliant literary minds of their day, and for all he knew, she was nothing but a backwater farm girl on whom her uncle had taken pity, one suited to nothing but sorting mail and answering the telephone.
“Youwouldmake a handsome couple,” Camilla murmured, eyes alight with mischief.
Tatiana did her best to return her face to neutral. The last thing she needed was her cousin and niece realizing that they were naming the very thing she’d begun to dream of. It would make it all the harder to face reality if someone knew that dream. Just like the dream of writing. “We are not a—”
“Hey, Anders!” Elea jumped to her feet, and Tatiana couldn’t be sure if it was genuine excitement or a kindhearted way to interrupt her as Anders apparently picked his way through the crowd toward them.
Turning half around, Tatiana saw the smile he gave her niece, and her ridiculous heart melted all the more for him. Why did he have to be so absolutely perfect?
He nodded to both Tatiana and Camilla but quickly returned his attention to Elea as he reached them. “Guess what I have just learned?”
Elea was always happy to play along. “What?”
“There is a party for children on Saturday, hosted by the Americans at Camp Kwitcherbelliakin.”
When the Americans first set up camp, Tatiana hadn’t known enough English to understand the strange name. But Stig was fluent and had explained the play on words to her, that it sounded like “Quit your belly aching”... a decidedly American idiom about complaining, it seemed. Now she couldn’t hear the name without chuckling. Elea clearly didn’t get the joke, but she tilted her head at the prospect of a party. “What kind of party?”
“Well if it’s like years past, there will be someone dressed up as St. Nicholas. They will sing Christmassongs and have games, and there will be cake and chocolate.”
Elea had been too young to remember life before the war began, but she certainly knew that chocolate, rare as it now was, was one of her favorite things. She spun to Tatiana. “Can we go, Aunt Tatta? Can we?”
She’d been planning on spending Saturday readying the flat for Christmas and using her saved-up rations to do some Christmas baking. And she’d never actually gone to the American base—fraternizing with the foreign men had been highly discouraged, even though the soldiers seemed rather desperate to have local girls come to their dances. The very thought of taking Elea there alone was daunting, to say the least. But how could she turn her niece down?
Anders sent her a warm smile. “I thought I could take the two of you, if you’re not too busy. I was talking to my mother on the phone just now and promised to take my niece, and I believe she and Elea are about the same age. I thought they’d like to meet each other. None of my nephews want to go, and Heidi is eager for a companion.”
Camilla leaned close enough to whisper into Tatiana’sear, “You hadbettersnap him up, Tatta. He couldn’t be more perfect!”
As if it were that easy.
Elea, of course, bounced in delight. “I’d love to! Can we, Aunt Tatta?”
