In all likelihood, she asked because she really wanted to go. But Tatiana wasn’t entirely willing to dismiss the possibility that her mischievous little niece was trying to play miniature matchmaker.
And was the gaze Anders sent her way warmer than usual, or was that just her imagination, fed by Elea’s claims of preference on his part?
Well, her plans for the day had been solely for Elea’s benefit anyway. They could do the baking another time. “Of course. We’d be delighted to join you.”
“Wonderful. The party begins at two o’clock. Heidi and I will drop by your flat and fetch you at one thirty.” He fell into awkwardness for a moment, nodding and half turning away, then back, then finally shaking his head and leaving with a wave... and a flush creeping up his neck.
She couldn’t help but smile at his retreating form. If there were a dearer man in Iceland, she’d never met him.
And given the way Elea and Camilla were gigglingand nudging each other as they watched her, her admiration was clear on her face. She felt her own cheeks heat in response and rolled her eyes. “Don’t say it,” she ordered in as gruff a voice as she could manage around her laugh. She pushed to her feet and nodded to the stack of orders they still had to get through today, if they were going to get them all out in time for Christmas delivery. “Another half hour or so of work, I think.”
The three of them headed for the worktable and got to it.
SIX
14 DECEMBER 1944
It was more than a little pathetic that he’d gotten so little sleep last night because he was agonizing over a children’s Christmas party still more than twenty-four hours away. But knowing that hadn’t kept the thoughts from endlessly parading through Anders’s mind as he’d lain in bed. Had it just been Elea joining him and Heidi, it would have been fine. But Tatiana was coming too.
It would be the first time they’d done anything together outside of work. For that matter, it would be the first time in years he’d doneanythingwith a womanwho wasn’t a relative outside of work. Just a children’s party, true. Not a date, per se.
He’d tried telling that to his overactive imagination time and again, but still it kept presenting him with innumerable scenarios for ways he could mess it all up and make Tatiana storm off in disgust.
From her little desk, Elea gusted out a sigh that was frustrated enough to capture his attention—attention thatshouldhave been on the manuscript before him, not on what stupid thing he’d likely say tomorrow to make Tatiana wish she’d stayed at home. He stood and moved to his door. Helga had been rising too but paused when she spotted him and gave him an encouraging nod. “Everything all right, Elea?”
She smacked her pencil on the desk. “It’s all wrong. What am I doing wrong?” She held up the paper she’d been drawing on—she’d already finished all the schoolwork her teacher had sent with her, but they’d still decided she’d spend the morning with him and Helga rather than in the warehouse, so she didn’t exhaust herself.
Anders moved closer and studied the drawing. He could tell at a glance that the figures represented Elea and... a woman. The little girl on the page had twobraids just like Elea and was wearing a dress like the one she currently had on. But he couldn’t be sure if the woman was meant to be her mother or her aunt. At least not at first. But further study showed him the skirt suit he highly doubted her mother wore on the farm.
“You and your aunt?”
She nodded but huffed again. “The hands are all wrong. And I can’t get the typewriter right either.”
Ah... was that what the awkwardly shaped box in the background was? He smiled. “Hands are notoriously tricky. I always put people in mittens in my drawings when I was your age to avoid the problem.”
She giggled at that. “That makes sense for winter. But what about summer pictures?”
“They always had their hands behind their back.” He hid his in demonstration. “Problem solved.”
This time her laugh was full and bright. “You draw hands now though. And they always look perfect.”
“Because eventually I decided I had better master them, so I drew them every day. Just hands—hands in every position I could think of. I’d sit like this.” He put his left hand into a pose and picked up a pencil with his right, mimicking drawing the left. “Of course, thatmeant I got good at left hands and still had trouble for a while with rights. My mother was forever frustrated by the bodiless hands strewn all over our house—though she said it was better than my eye phase.” He grinned at the memory. “Everywhere she turned around, there was a paper with an eye staring at her. Angry eyes, dreamy eyes, surprised eyes...”
Helga laughed. “Your poor mother! All those dismembered body parts.”
Elea grinned. “You must have practiced a lot.”
“Much to my parents’ dismay.” He motioned for her to lower the drawing to the desk again and knelt beside her. “As for the typewriter—you’re drawing what your mind says it should look like rather than what your eyes actually see. If viewing a typewriter from this angle, you don’t actually see the roundness of the keys, do you? Take a look.” He motioned toward the machine on his own desk.
She got up and moved into his office, going behind his desk, brows furrowing as she studied it. “The keys just look... flat. Maybe a little bit of an oval on some of them.”
“Mm-hmm. This is what we call ‘perspective’ in art. And you needn’t feel bad for not realizing it—it wasn’tuntil the Renaissance that artists began incorporating perspective into their work. Realism didn’t always matter, you see. And there are plenty of artistic movements that don’t care about realism even today.”
“I want it to look real though.” She pursed her lips, eyes still on the typewriter. “Can I look at this while I’m drawing it?”
“Certainly. I’ll set it on Helga’s desk for you so you can see it.” He rose from his kneel and did just that. It wasn’t as though he needed the typewriter this morning anyway, and while Helga had one of her own, shewasusing it.
Though as he got it into its new position, he paused, his own brows drawing together. Tatiana had a typewriter in her office, it was true, which she used for the correspondence she did for Valdi, much as Helga did for Anders. But from the details Elea had already lightly sketched into place, the room she and Tatiana were standing in wasnother aunt’s office at the Story Society. The desk was completely different, and there was a sofa visible too, and a window. “Is this your aunt’s flat?”
