Chapter 7 Ember
Ember
“Where did Ransom go?” Aksel asks, looking around at the village square where I was sitting on a bench, nibbling on roasted chestnuts.
“She took him away.” Freja wiggles her eyebrows. “I hope she gives good head because she’s got the personality of a—”
“Why do women think that all we care about is good head?” Jonathan demands with mock affront.
Freja arches an eyebrow. “Would you rather be with a woman who cooks a nice meal or sucks you off—”
“La, la, la, la!” Aksel exclaims. “I don’t need my sister to talk about sex.”
“Actually, she’s talking about a blow job,” I interject mischievously.
Aksel is cute when he gets flustered about his sisters getting it on with a man. Even now, when I’m thirty and Freja is in her late thirties, Aksel gets all sanctimonious about it.
Freja takes a chestnut from my newspaper cone and peels it. “Regardless, neither of you can tell me that Ransom wants that.”
“Mama says he’s going to propose to her.” I hold up the chestnuts to Jonathan, who shakes his head.
“He hasn’t said a thing to me.” Aksel grabs a chestnut. “I think it’s casual. Like, very casual.”
“Like friends with head benefits?” Freja remarks.
Aksel scowls. “Something like that. He was very fucked up after Olivia and…then there was someone he got serious about. Never told me who. But he ended it, saying she was too young. Since then, there’s just been…you know…casual fucking.”
If my eyes could pop out cartoon style, they would’ve. How many too young women had Ransom dated? Me and…who?
“He doesn’t look like someone who has an age hangup.” Freja bites into the chestnut and chews thoughtfully. “Jonathan, would you give me up if I were younger than you?”
My sister’s husband, who is three years her junior, pretends to give it some thought. “Baby, considering how I look, it’s better for me that the women I’m with are older and have poor vision. Otherwise, I’d think they just want me for my good looks.”
We all groan at his lame joke.
Jonathan is a pretty boy, period, full stop. He’s got that whole JFK thing going, including my sister, who’s a blonde Jackie O.
“I’m getting tired! I want to go home.” Freja sits down next to me. “Aksel, can you text Ransom, tell him to come over now or find a way back for himself and his lady?”
“Stop calling her that. It’s insulting to ladies,” Aksel remarks as he pulls his phone out.
Before he can text, a trio strikes up—violin, accordion, tambourine—spilling out a Savoyard folk tune bright and lively.
The violin sings a sharp, joyous lead; the accordion threads in a warm nostalgia; while the tambourine skips briskly.
Since we’re already in the square, we have a perfect vantage point to watch and listen.
A few couples near the front link arms and begin a simple circle dance, stepping in time, their boots crunching against the snow-dusted cobblestones.
People start clapping, drawn in by the rhythm.
Freja grabs my hand. “Come on.”
“Absolutely not,” I protest, even as she’s tugging me forward with that manic glint in her eye.
Aksel appears on my other side, catching my free hand. “It’s got to be done, baby sister. Rousseau tradition.”
Half laughing, half stumbling, I’m caught between my brother and sister. Within a minute, we slip into an old rhythm—a spinning, clapping, foot-stomping burst of childhood muscle memory.
A right step, left cross, stomp-twist, and turn. Then a full circle spin and back again.
We link arms and twirl, switching partners, our laughter rising above the music.
We used to dance like this in the drawing room of the chalet as children, our grandparents watching—barefoot on the antique rugs, mimicking what we’d seen at village fêtes—and our happiness echoing against stone walls and high ceilings.
Now, under string lights and falling snow, we dance for the sheer pleasure of being together.
Freja throws her head back and whoops.
Aksel claps in time.
I let myself go.
When the song ends, we’re breathless and rosy-cheeked. A small crowd claps for us.
Aksel bows dramatically.
Freja curtsies. “We’re a troupe,” she declares. “We should start charging.”
“Well, that was something.” I feel the heat of Ransom’s body behind me just as I hear his voice.
I still.
“Just some silly dancing,” I mutter, mostly to myself.
“Not silly.” Freja snickers. “It was elegant.”
I give an exaggerated eye roll. “If stomping around like elephants is elegant.”
“That was so very entertaining.” Calypso’s words are complimentary, but her tone is not.
Also, she’s once again surgically attached to Ransom.
They’ve been snuggling up all the time we’ve been at the market. He even bought her a bracelet. He kissed her.
I’ve been watching them like a lovesick fool.
“You know, Ransom, I used to dance. Ballet,” Calypso shows off. “It was a long time ago. It’s why I’m so flexible.”
Freja’s gaze flicks toward me and then Aksel.
The three of us smother our grins when Jonathan murmurs in a sing-song manner, “Good head. Good head.”
Chef Pascal made a casual dinner—or whatever passes for one when Mama is involved. We had pissaladière, the southeastern French answer to pizza, from the chef’s hometown of Nice, which we ate in the sunroom, not the dining room.
See? Casual.
Cue, eye roll.
After dinner, most of us gathered under the heated gazebo, wrapped in blankets.
The kids—Anika and Thomas—are finally asleep after an energetic hour of chasing each other around the chalet in reindeer pajamas. They arrived an hour or so after dinner, bursting with energy after spending four hours in the car driving from Zurich airport.
Latika had disappeared to tuck them in, and now she’s returned, curled up beside Aksel on one of the outdoor couches.
Her head rests lightly on his shoulder, their hands linked.
She’s glowing in the firelight—soft brown skin, dark hair twisted into a loose braid, a gentle smile that’s grace in motion.
Latika is the kind of woman who commands a room by listening.
She’s thoughtful. Warm. Wickedly smart. She has a calm, competent energy that makes her ideal for crisis meetings at the World Bank, as well as for negotiating bedtime with two overtired children.
Aksel looks at her like she hung the moon, and when she glances at him, her whole face warms like a second fire.
Heidi and Gisele went to bed at the same time the kids did, as they’re still wrestling with jet lag.
“Thomas asks her where Poo comes from.” Aksel is telling a story about Latika, who’s lying against him, looking amused and content. “She tells him about digestion and toxic waste and shit.”
“Aksel,” Mama protests. “It’s uncouth to talk about…well, you know what.”
My brother ignores my mother. “So, Thomas, our little Tank Engine, considers what she said thoughtfully, and then looks at her and asks, ‘And what about Tigger?’”
We burst out laughing.
Latika shakes her head. “Honestly, parenting is bloody hard.”
Born and raised in London in a close-knit Indian family, Latika speaks with that unmistakable British-Indian lilt and has a lifelong love of Indian street food—something I’ve grown to love, too, thanks to her dragging me through Hounslow for pani puri and tikka chaat.
“I’m looking forward to hearing how you’re going to explain the birds and the bees to the kids,” Aksel teases.
“Let’s not let her,” Freja suggests on a yawn. “Poor kids will be turned off sex forever.”
Aksel gives it a thought. “I’m okay with that for Anika.”
“Men!” Freja grumbles. “You’re such hypocrites. You’d be fine with Thomas sleeping around, but Anika? Oh, no, she needs to stay a virgin and pure.”
“Please!” Papa groans. “Don’t use the word virgin and my granddaughter’s name in the same sentence.”
Mama laughs. “Like father, like son.”
The gazebo night has been a tradition since I was a child; something we always do, snow or shine, during our Chamonix sojourn.
It’s always the same—mulled wine, rum, and cognac passed around in heavy mugs.
Thick wool blankets are draped over shoulders like capes. The fire pit blazing at the center, sending up the scent of charred pine and citrus from the orange peels Mama always tosses into the flames.
That’s Mama for you.
“Smoke should smell like a memory, not firewood,” she says every year. And every year, she’s right.
When we were younger, our grandparents were with us.
Aunt Tanya and Uncle Bob were a permanent fixture, along with their son, our cousin, who now lives in Australia and is not always able to make it for Christmas, but we do see him in the summer.
Mama has rituals for August, too, but in their home in the Hamptons.
Freja sits up and spears a marshmallow— ours are handmade, courtesy of Chef Pascal—before holding it up over the open flame.
This is ritual as well.
Outdoor fire. Christmas. And Croque-Nuit—the Rousseau version of s’mores. A made-up name which came into existence when Freja couldn’t remember what a croque monsieur was and mashed it together with “nuit” because we always made them at night.
Obviously, our s’mores are loftier than the usual, so instead of graham crackers, we use delicate Breton galettes. The chocolate is always dark, always French, always at least 70% cacao.
I prefer the real s’mores, but I wouldn’t dare tell Mama that.
“Isn’t that awfully sweet?” Calypso wonders as Ransom sticks his s’more into the fire.
“That’s the point,” he replies cheerfully. “You’ll love it. Trust me.”
“I do,” she says, her eyes bright in the firelight.
I look away. Talk about torture. This is it. I should’ve found a way not to come—or asked Mama not to invite Ransom.
Right. Because that wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows at all.
I suppress a sigh and tip my head back to look at the stars overhead. They are brilliant, like cut glass flung across navy velvet.
When I was a child and the world felt impossible—when my problems felt too big to name—I’d look up at the sky, at those millions of glittering dots, and remember how small I really was. How small everything was.