30. Copenhagen
COPENHAGEN
To keep herself from jumping out of her skin from sheer nerves, Lucy spent the day walking through Copenhagen, starting with Rosenborg Castle and the Botanical Garden.
She meandered along the walking streets, stopping at Royal Copenhagen, where she bought Greta a porcelain plate to replace the one Zoe had broken.
It wasn’t Meissen, but she hoped it would ease the blow when Lucy was forced to fess up to her list of damages.
At the Glypototek museum, she spent far too much time circling Rodin’s The Kiss . It was so beautiful, this marble sculpture of a couple in a passionate embrace—the woman’s arms around the man’s neck, his hand on her bare hip—and it filled her with longing for Mason.
She left the museum and made her way back along the canal to her hotel.
She showered and dressed for dinner, her hands shaky as she buttoned her blouse, unable to decide whether she should come out with the news about Jack right away or wait until dessert.
What if he was nothing like the young man she’d known in college?
What if he was hostile and cold? What if she disliked everything about the father of her child?
When Lucy walked into the restaurant, she looked around the room at all the faces, in search of a man she hadn’t seen in almost two decades.
But it was a woman who tapped her on the shoulder. “Lucy?”
She turned to see a tall, striking Nordic woman and recognized her at once from her years of googling Bj?rn.
“Astrid,” she said.
“Bj?rn is running late.”
Astrid was just plain stunning in real life, and Lucy felt her face grow suddenly hot from embarrassment. To have this conversation in front of Bj?rn’s wife would be mortifying. “It’s nice to meet you. How did you know it was me?”
“Bj?rn has pictures of you,” she said, her lips just barely smiling.
Lucy had pictures of Bj?rn too. On that fateful day when she’d bought a pregnancy test at Dougherty’s in Preston Royal, she’d also dropped off eight rolls of film.
Among the snapshots of all the sights she’d seen in Europe were pictures she’d taken of the handsome Dane, all boxed up now in her Dallas garage.
“Our table is ready,” Astrid said.
The hostess walked them through the dining room, and Lucy felt some kind of menopause-style hot flash take hold as her nervous system went absolutely haywire; even her hands felt hot. She took her seat in a hard spindle-back chair across from Astrid. What must this woman think of her?
“So,” Astrid said, her elbows on the table, her fingers clasped. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Lucy was caught off guard. “I doubt that,” she said, waving her hand to indicate her complete lack of importance. “Bj?rn and I hardly knew each other, and it was a long time ago.”
“And yet here we are,” Astrid said, looking at her with unflinching candor. “All these years later.”
Astrid had a smooth, lovely voice, and Lucy would bet a thousand Danish kroner that she had an excellent bedside manner.
“I was surprised when Bj?rn said you’d reached out after all this time,” Astrid went on. “We both were.”
“Sorry if this is strange,” Lucy said. “I’d like to explain—”
But she was saved by the waitress who came to the table to offer menus. Astrid leaned in on her tan, bare forearms. “I’ll order a bottle of wine, yes? Would that be okay?”
“Please,” Lucy said. As Astrid spoke Danish to the waitress, Lucy wondered whether this dinner was going to get more awkward or less once Bj?rn showed up. Her hands were trembling, so she sat on them.
“Now then,” Astrid said as the waitress walked off, “tell me about yourself.”
“Oh, nothing much to tell,” said Lucy. “I live in Texas with my husband and three children. My husband’s away at the moment—”
“Yes, I read about him,” she said. It seemed Astrid knew as much about Lucy’s life as Lucy knew about hers. “It seems you married a brilliant man.”
“I did,” Lucy said. “As did Bj?rn. A brilliant woman, I mean. You.” No, Lucy was not at her best. She had not prepared herself for spending the evening with Astrid, although, of course, she should have. She wished she’d explicitly included her.
“Lucy,” Astrid said purposefully. “Bj?rn and I have different opinions on how to say what needs to be said tonight, so I’m just going to be very open with you before he arrives.”
Lucy braced herself, but for what? An accusation that Lucy still had feelings for this woman’s husband after so many years? A jealous tirade?
“Jack is Bj?rn’s child.”
Lucy blanched. If this were a play, Astrid had just stolen her most dramatic line and delivered it herself.
“I apologize if I’m wrong,” Astrid said, “but I’m not wrong, am I?”
Lucy swallowed. She hoped the wine was coming and fast. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I mean no, you’re not wrong. Bj?rn is his biological father.” It felt good to say it out loud, and yet Lucy dreaded Astrid’s reaction.
Her expression was inscrutable. “Does Jack think Mason is his father?”
“No, Jack knows about Bj?rn,” Lucy said. “I told him when he was young.”
“And Mason knows?”
“Of course,” said Lucy.
“When you learned you were pregnant,” she said, “why didn’t you tell Bj?rn right away?”
“I tried,” Lucy said. “I really did, but I could never find a time when the news wouldn’t blow up his life.”
“So you are here to blow up our lives now?”
Lucy had never met a woman so self-assured, so clear. And why, she wondered, had the waitress failed to bring them water or anything liquid to swallow the sawdust in her mouth? “I have no desire to blow up anything,” she said.
“Then why does your mother send us Christmas cards?”
Lucy leaned in. “She what now?”
“Your mother,” said Astrid. “She sends us a Christmas card from Dallas every year. And one year, when Jack was perhaps eight or nine, I looked very closely at the picture, and I could see the resemblance.”
Why, Lucy wondered, was she even surprised her mother would have taken the liberty to make contact?
“If you suspected Jack might be Bj?rn’s,” Lucy said, “why didn’t you ask me?”
“We thought you had your reasons for keeping it a secret all that time, and we didn’t think we should impose. Maybe you didn’t want your husband to know the truth. But now,” Astrid said, “he’s away on his Mars expedition, and maybe you’re trying to… well, I don’t exactly know what it is you want.”
Lucy put her palms on the table and took a breath.
“Let me be clear. I am very, very”—and as she spoke, she realized there were not enough “very”s in the world—“very happily married. I want nothing from you or Bj?rn, I need nothing. But Jack would like to meet him, and while it would be nice if we all got along, there’s no need for you to see me ever again if that’s what you and Bj?rn want, and I assume it is.
The last thing I aim to do is cause a problem. ”
Astrid relaxed slightly in her chair, leaning back as the waitress came with the wine. It took forever for her to open the bottle and pour it.
She felt a hand on her shoulder then and looked up.
And there he was, her first love, the man who had inadvertently played a pivotal role in her past and present.
Bj?rn had a few lines around his eyes, but she would have recognized him anywhere.
Lucy stood up, unsure of what to do, but Bj?rn opened his arms and hugged her.
She felt the hurt he’d caused all over again, just as she was overcome with affection for him.
She wiped her eyes on her napkin and sat back down across from Astrid.
“We have everything out in the open,” Astrid said, putting a hand on Bj?rn’s sleeve, “so let’s just move forward. Lucy says Jack would like to meet his father.”
“It’s true then?” he said, sitting beside his wife, looking at Lucy with an eager expression. “But I don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“That’s not our concern,” Astrid said. “I’d rather hear about Jack.”
“I’m only wondering,” he said, “why Lucy didn’t say something sooner. Eighteen years is a long time—”
“I tried,” Lucy said, facing Bj?rn with a self-assuredness of her own. “As you know, I called quite a few times.”
“Yes, but I wish you had kept trying. You should have tried harder.”
She leveled her gaze at him. “I couldn’t.”
Bj?rn cocked his head. “I don’t understand. We would have liked to know, yes?” he said, looking to Astrid to back him up.
“The last time I called,” Lucy said, “I left a message that you never returned. But then I got your letter and understood very clearly how you felt. It silenced me, which was what you wanted.”
“It was a long time ago,” he said, shaking his head. “What letter…?”
She took out the letter Greta had unearthed for her and placed it on the table.
It was humiliating to present it. She opened the envelope, remembering how she’d felt when it arrived in her parents’ mailbox.
How excited she’d been to open it, and then how crushed she’d felt upon reading it.
She unfolded the paper and read aloud: “?‘Lucy, Communication from you is not wanted, not now or ever. Stay away from my family and cease all attempts to contact me. What we had was short-lived and is now OVER. I have no feelings for you. I am married and have my own life, and it does not include you. I will say goodbye now, for the last time.’?”
Bj?rn had gone pale. “I never said such things,” he said. “Why would I—”
Lucy turned the letter around so he could see it for himself, typed on his letterhead, signed with a black fountain pen.
“I understand why you felt the way you did,” Lucy said, “newly married and all. In retrospect, I know I should have written you back anyway and told you about Jack. I owed you that. I wasn’t very mature back then. ”
“But,” he said, examining the page, “why— I always liked to hear from you.”
And at that, Astrid got up and left the table.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” Lucy said, putting a hand to her forehead.
“But— Will you excuse me a moment,” he said, and rushed after his wife.
This was a catastrophe. Lucy sat back in her chair, defeated. So much for coming to Copenhagen to smooth things over. She folded the letter and put it back in her purse, wondering whether either one of them would ever come back.
She finished her glass of wine, replaying the conversation in her mind, and Bj?rn returned to the table alone.
“I’m so sorry,” Lucy said.
“No, forgive me. I’m rather shocked at the moment.” Bj?rn looked so much like her son, his current expression so similar to Jack’s that terrible day in the principal’s office when he knew his life was getting upended.
“I only brought the letter,” she said, “to explain why I kept something so important from you for so long, and to apologize—”
“It is not my letter,” he said, turning his palms open on the table. “Astrid wrote it.”
It took a moment for Lucy to process this admission, and when she did, she felt oddly calm. Something that had never made any sense to her before was suddenly perfectly explained.
“I am very angry with her right now,” he said, red splotches on his pale cheeks. “Such a dishonest, terrible thing she did. I can’t imagine how you felt. I don’t think I can forgive her for this,” he said. “How could she—”
“Actually,” Lucy said, taking a deep breath, feeling hope she could do exactly what she’d come to do, “I understand Astrid very well. She thought she needed to protect her marriage from a threat. She wanted me to go away.”
“But you didn’t deserve that. And you were raising our child.”
“Astrid didn’t know that,” Lucy said. “And anyway, we were young and stupid, weren’t we? Don’t be mad at her.”
“But if she hadn’t written that letter, I might have known Jack all these years.” He looked at her, and then sat forward. “Tell me about him, please.”
Lucy took a deep breath. “Jack is kind and sensitive, and he’s so smart,” she said.
She was tempted to go on, to tell him more, to describe every wonderful quality he had and every challenge he faced, but it didn’t feel right.
It was not her place. So she left it at that.
Jack’s relationship with Bj?rn would be between them.
“He’s written a letter to you. I hope you’ll consider getting to know him. ”
“Of course, I’d love that. It’s so good to see you, after all this time. Since we’re here,” he said, turning, perhaps to look for the waitress, “shouldn’t we order dinner? I need a moment of calm before I go home to Astrid.”
She smiled at him. “No,” she said, and shook her head.
She had not come here to reconnect with Bj?rn.
And when she’d told Astrid she didn’t want or need anything from them, she’d been wholly honest. “But it was really good to see you.” Yes, she could see a version of Jack’s face in his, and something in his voice as well.
Nature refused to be denied. But there was no denying the role of nurture, either, and Mason had always been Jack’s father.
From the start, he’d been caring and kind.
From the start, he’d noticed Jack’s curiosity in the world around him and wanted him to have every opportunity to learn and grow, at his school and beyond. From the start, he’d loved his son.
Oh, what she would have done to have Mason with her.
She wished she could— No, she decided then that she was done being apart from him.
She would break into the biosphere, not with guns blazing maybe, but with sheer determination to bust him out.
She wasn’t sure how to do it, but it was time to bring Mason home.