Chapter 16
It isn’t perfect, but it will hold.” Oskar Rasmussen, Nikolai’s father, stands in my bathroom, arms akimbo, surveying the four tiles he’d replaced with the precision of an accomplished craftsman.
There had been some hairline cracks in the existing tiles I probably never would have noticed if they hadn’t been pointed out to me, and Oskar had insisted on making the repairs himself.
He looks remarkably like his son, just with more white around the temples, stylish tortoiseshell glasses, and the stubbly beard of a retired man who has gleefully given up daily shaving.
“It looks better than new. Thank you so much. I’m happy to—”
He holds up a hand before I can finish my sentence. “Nej. I could not look myself in the mirror if I took a single krone from Jannick Sorensen’s daughter. And the damage wasn’t caused by you.”
“Dinner then.” I shoot him the best imitation of my dad’s “I’m not accepting no for an answer” look. “And soon.”
He holds up both hands in mock surrender. “I will never say no to a meal cooked by you and my son. I don’t think there is a flat in Copenhagen with more culinary talent under its roof.” His expression is one of pride, but the tinge of grief there is unmistakable.
I can’t come out and ask outright, but I can test the waters to see if my hunch about the root of his sorrows is correct. “I’d be nowhere without my dad’s influence. He was the one who shoved me into the world of fine dining.”
Oskar barks a full-bellied laugh. “I’ve no doubt my old friend Jannick was persuasive, but the way I understand it, all he had to do was lead the proverbial horse to water.
You drank from the waters eagerly enough.
” A cloud passes over his face. “Before the accident he wrote to me to tell me how proud he was of you.”
I place a steadying hand on the cool marble of the bathroom sink.
“You kept up correspondence all these years?” Dad had been in the States for almost twenty-five years before he passed.
I can’t imagine not seeing letters posted from Denmark in the hundreds of times I fetched the mail in my eighteen years at home.
Oskar shakes his head. “Nej. Both of us were stubborn, but he was the better man of the two of us. He wrote to me when you went off to culinary school in New York. Something about you going off and seeking the dream he and I shared must have inspired him to reach out. We only had the time to exchange a couple of letters before he was taken from us.”
This feels like a fresh confession, so Copenhagen Sabrina apparently hasn’t pressed the issue.
I wonder why . . . And while there is no way I can contain my curiosity well enough to allay this conversation, I do hope there isn’t a reason why the Sabrina native to this timeline has been more circumspect.
But I press anyway. “You and he wanted to work in the restaurant business?”
A smile tugs at the corners of his lips. “Yes, we had a grand vision of opening a restaurant together: La Mer Grise. We were going to be spoken of in the same breath as Escoffier and Carême.”
I chuckle at the idea of my father at the height of his youthful bravado. “So why didn’t you?”
The merry twinkle in his blue eyes dims a bit. “Ah, a tale as old as the gray sea itself. We quarreled. Over a girl, naturally.”
I don’t want to derail his soliloquy with a question, so I just offer an encouraging, “Oh?”
He gestures toward the living room where Nikolai and his mother are conversing on the sofa over coffee. “Yrse. For me, it’s always been Yrse. I can’t say I’m sorry she chose me, but I am sorry it cost me my dearest friend.”
“That’s so sad.” I can’t think of anything more profound to add.
If Dad was willing to leave Denmark and everyone he knew and loved because of Yrse, whom I met briefly earlier as she assisted Oskar in the tile repairs, he must have loved her beyond words.
Which seemed to be the only way he was capable.
I had always thought Robin was the end-all and be-all for him.
From my perspective he’d certainly loved her like she was the only woman in the world, and he was lucky enough to have been chosen from among billions of eligible suitors.
To know there had been love before her shouldn’t be surprising.
He was a grown man when he’d met her, after all.
But it was still jarring to think of his life here and all the secrets it held.
Oskar shakes himself from his reverie. “Well, if your father hadn’t gone to America, you wouldn’t be here now.
And I know in my soul your father had no regrets on that score.
I’m only sorry he wasn’t given the time to come back and introduce you himself as he planned to.
He said in his letter that he hoped to surprise you with a trip for your graduation. ”
“He did talk about bringing me here. I was always sorry we never got the chance. And it seemed wrong to come here without him.” I had wrestled with the worry that feeling his presence here would be too painful, or worse, that I wouldn’t feel him at all.
The pain of losing someone so dear is awful, but no one tells you how much worse it is when you realize how much the pain has dulled. It’s like losing them a second time.
“I should have reached out after the accident. I suppose I let my grief get the better of me, and I couldn’t bear to write to your mother as I should have done. I am sorry for that. But perhaps you were meant to meet us now, after you have had time to adjust to your loss a little more.”
Oskar is probably right. Meeting him, Yrse, and Nikolai so soon after Dad’s passing might have been too much to process. They carry a bit of him in their hearts, just as I do.
I cast my eyes downward and will the tears not to fall.
As many do-overs as Rosaline might allow, the life in which Dad survived his fall and we came here when I was fresh out of culinary school wasn’t one I’d ever get to see.
The life where Oskar was a beloved avuncular figure in my early adulthood.
Where Nikolai and I would have entered the culinary trenches at around the same time.
I might have stayed here in Copenhagen instead of meeting Edward in New Orleans.
Nikolai and I might have built each other up, rather than Edward and I flinging insults at a Christmas party. Life might have been very different.
Oskar wraps an arm around me. “I don’t mean to upset you, min skat.
” I flinch at the endearment my father used so often.
“But, selfishly, having you here is a chance to make a few things right. And it is a joy to see you and Nikolai share the flat your father and I shared as young men. It feels like life has come full circle in a way.”
I return his embrace. I can see why Dad had felt a kinship with this man.
And more things start to make sense. Dad had been grieving his friendship with Oskar and his unrequited love for Yrse so much that he couldn’t bring himself to talk about them.
And if Oskar’s reactions are any sort of metric, leaving them behind had been the hardest sacrifice of his too-short life.
He’d loved so deeply, he’d had to leave. Whereas me? I’ve never stayed anywhere long enough to make the sort of human connections I’d miss. Have I been too scared to love anyone as much as I loved my father?
I circle back to Oskar’s previous statement. “This was Dad’s flat too?” I hope this isn’t something Copenhagen Sabrina should already know, but I get the sense she’s kept Nikolai and his family at arm’s length. Her pain is a bit fresher than mine, after all.
He nods, not acting as though this is old hat.
“It belonged to his parents, and they left it to him when they died. It may have been in the family for a few generations before that, too, though I can’t be sure.
Yrse and I bought it from him so he’d have the funds to get a start in America.
It was the only help he would accept from anyone.
But I’ve considered this the Sorensen home my whole life.
I thought about selling it a time or two, but I could never bring myself to do it.
Closest I could do is rent it out, and we see what a mess that was.
” He gestures to the repaired tiles that, in all honesty, would have been fine for quite some time as they were.
“But to see you back here does my heart good.”
I swallow back so many words. It’s hard to imagine this place that has been updated with so many modern conveniences being my dad’s boyhood home.
His parents’ home. Who knows how many of my ancestors lived and died within these very walls?
But rather than feeling haunted by the ghosts of generations past, I feel . . . at home.
“Are you two making porcelain for new tiles in there?” Yrse’s voice, rather lyrical and her English more accented than her husband’s, floats into the bathroom before she herself enters it.
Despite decades of marriage, Oskar’s face brightens at the sight of his wife. “All finished, min kaerlighed. Just reminiscing about old times with our Sabrina.”
She smiles and wraps an arm around me. “Meget godt. Having her here is like having a bit of Jannick back with us, is it not?”
“Exactly so.” Oskar’s voice is husky. “But we sentimental old fools are probably boring her socks off.”
“Not at all. Quite the opposite. It’s wonderful to hear about him from other people who loved him.” I squeeze Yrse back. She radiates kindness, and it’s plain to me why Dad would have been smitten with her. She actually looks a bit like Robin, but without the barbed tongue.
I realize it has been a long time since I got to reminisce about Dad.
Robin changes the subject, Brian clams up, and Chloe was young enough that she didn’t get to relate to him on an adult level.
She remembers trips to Disneyland and being hoisted on his shoulders at parades, not long conversations about sustainable restaurant management and the virtues and limitations of the farm-to-table movement.
I love gabbing with her about the early childhood memories, but Chloe and I just can’t connect about him on quite the same level.
We return to the living room, where Nikolai is pouring more coffee and has added a platter of butter cookies to the coffee table. Made from scratch, no doubt. And though I am still stuffed from lunch, I have to sample his handiwork, which is obviously incredible.
We chat for a solid hour about everything and nothing.
More than a little about Dad and their shared experiences at school and the two years shortly after.
Like Dad, Oskar had avoided the restaurant business.
He’d become a watchmaker, like his father.
It wasn’t his passion, but he enjoyed his work.
I think neither of them could face their old dream without the other, but both were thrilled to see their children go into the industry they’d intended for themselves.
In this instance I don’t mind the vicarious living.
Nikolai and I have come to the field of our own volition.
His rapport with his parents is easy, and I find mine is too.
Rather than being distracted counting down the minutes until I can excuse myself from their company, I am enjoying the conversation and being in the company of people who share this connection with me.
I’m sad when Nikolai looks down at his watch and declares, “We should leave for service soon.” Odd, given how anxious I usually am to dive into work. I exchange hugs with his parents, who look pleased when Nikolai casually wraps an arm around me as they turn for a final wave.