Chapter 25
Every time she heard someone’s footsteps on the veranda outside, Ida dived into the kitchen.
She didn’t want to see Erik. It was bad enough that she’d run into him this morning.
He’d spoken so gently to her it made her heart break all over again.
She’d never cried so hard over anything, not even her parents dying.
In both cases, the process had been so slow that it had given her time to come to terms with the sadness and loss almost before it happened.
With Erik, it had been a swift and devastating blow to her heart that she hadn’t seen coming.
‘Ida, you should go home,’ Mats said shortly after he arrived for the day. ‘Disappearing every time a guest comes in isn’t what we’re after in a hotel manager.’
‘I don’t need to go home. Can we make Erik leave? He got what he came for.’
‘We’re not doing that. Let me call Emilie or Magnus.’
‘So he’s won you over.’ It was so typical of Mats to not take sides right at the point she needed him to.
‘There’s been a misunderstanding, Ida. He’s not here for the island, it’s the timber forest.’
‘Oh, well, that’s fine then. Let him chop down half the trees and ship them to Canada. That’s exactly what we need to make the island more picturesque.’
Mats did that thing he always did when he was impatient with her and looked at the ceiling to gather himself before he spoke. ‘Did he tell you why the agreement was made all those years ago?’
He hadn’t told her because she hadn’t let him. ‘It doesn’t matter, Mats. Whatever the reason was, he decided not to tell me that’s why he was here. He let me…he lied to me.’ She was finding it hard to talk about without fresh tears springing into her eyes.
‘Let him talk to you, Ida.’ Mats took her in his arms, and she let a few tears soak into his shirt before she pulled away.
‘I don’t know if I can trust him.’
‘Things have been difficult for you, same as they have for him. You find it hard to trust people. You let your guard down and he hurt you.’
It was strange to hear her brother so full of wisdom. It must be Lotta’s influence.
‘Maybe give him the benefit of the doubt, because he came here for his family and didn’t expect to find you. It’s not up to me to fight his corner, but give him a chance to do that before you throw him off the island.’
Ida huffed, but actually she couldn’t bear the thought of letting him leave and never seeing him again.
She’d never felt this way about a man before and she might not have much dating experience but she knew that someone who was kind, thoughtful, funny and endlessly capable, even if he had the odd grumpy patch, was the kind of person she wanted to be with and they weren’t around every corner.
‘I’ll talk to him.’
‘I expect he’s at Fredrik’s cabin’
‘You think I should go now?’
He nodded. ‘You’ll be miserable until you do. I’ll cover for you.’
Ida went outside, heading for the cabin. She felt nervous about seeing Erik. Giving him a chance to explain felt like letting her guard down, and she wasn’t very good at that.
He was outside the cabin, leaning over a long piece of wood that was balanced on two trestles. He was stroking it with his hand, then sanding it before stroking it again. A perfectionist at work.
‘Ida.’ He stood up when he saw it was her and fiddled with the sandpaper.
‘Mats thinks I should hear you out. So that’s why I’m here.’
Really, she was here because she wanted to love him and she had to know if he felt the same, or whether she’d been a convenient way in to having a connection with the family. A way to pass the time on his research trip.
She sat on the patch of grass between the cabin and the water, watching Erik wince as he joined her before stretching his legs out in front of him.
‘Sorry, we can sit somewhere else.’
‘It’s okay, I’m down here now.’
She knew he was smiling at her, but she kept her eyes forward.
‘Can I tell you my side of the story about the letter?’
She nodded. He told her the most wonderful story of how his great-grandfather had saved the life of hers during the Second World War and had been given half of the timber forest as a thank you.
‘I can see how you think I made friends with you to get information or something, but it wasn’t like that, Ida.
This was something my whole family had wondered about for years, and it never occurred to anyone to come looking before.
It kept me going through my darkest times.
And none of that has anything to do with the way I feel about you. ’
She sniffed and looked away. ‘You could have told me.’
‘I could have, but I’ve spent the past eight months being a grumpy asshole, and that’s hard to shake off. It’s only when I got to know you that I knew I could have told you, and by then it was harder because of other things.’
Because of what had happened between them. She knew that’s what he meant, and it was a measure of how well he understood her that he could predict her reaction.
‘That’s not a good enough reason. I feel betrayed, Erik. I was honest with you about everything, like I’ve never been with anyone before. I’ve bared my soul to you and I thought you’d done the same.’
Erik shifted, lying back on the grass, rubbing his hands over his face.
‘Shit, Ida. Things have been so messed up for me, the stuff in my soul is all that’s left.
You’ve seen all of that, all the worst parts of me.
This letter? It doesn’t even matter compared to what we’ve had these past couple of weeks.
It kept me going, brought me here, but once you and I… that wasn’t why I wanted to stay.’
‘What are you going to do? Mats said I have to ask you. Are you taking the forest?’
He laughed and shook his head. ‘I don’t want the forest, Ida, I want you.’
She didn’t know what to say to that. It was too fast. She was sure she was in love with him, but that didn’t mean she was all in yet. And that the letter had thrown her so far off course proved that.
‘I don’t know if I’m ready for that.’
‘I know. And that’s why I’m leaving. Going back to Canada.’
Now she lay down. Hadn’t he just said he wanted her? ‘You can’t leave.’
‘Why, Ida? Tell me.’
His tone hurt her, almost physically, reminding her of the day he’d blown up at her about the hot water.
And it kept her from being able to tell him exactly why she didn’t want him to leave.
Because if she laid her heart out for him after working so hard to mend it over the past few years, she had to know he’d be careful with it.
And she knew he had enough trouble taking care of his own.
‘I thought you wanted to stay and work on the cabins?’
Erik pushed himself to standing and exhaled before he said, ‘That’s not a good enough reason. I can’t stay to help Mats. I can only stay for you. Is that what you want?’
He was making it so easy for her, and yet it seemed harder than ever to say that one small word. Yes. Because if she did, that meant she was responsible for his happiness as well as her own, and she wasn’t ready for that.
‘It doesn’t mean I don’t love you,’ she said, standing up and reaching for his hand.
‘I know.’
He leant forward and kissed her. It was a lingering kiss that she thought meant everything was going to be okay, but then he was striding through the forest away from her almost before she’d opened her eyes.
‘Erik! Erik…’ A sob escaped from her at the same time, and his name was lost somewhere between her and him.
And it didn’t feel to Ida as if he’d have stopped even if he’d heard.
Before she headed back to the hotel, she took a couple of minutes to gather herself.
Deep breaths helped her sobs subside; then she wiped her cheeks with the bottom of her t-shirt.
She was kneeling by the water, splashing it on her face to soothe the skin she knew would be red around her eyes, when Mats came along.
‘I saw Erik. So I guess the talk didn’t go so well?’ He pulled Ida into a hug.
‘I can’t ask him to stay for me. It’s too much.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you think he’s really leaving?’
‘Yes,’ Mats said gently. ‘He said he was checking out now.’
‘I need to talk to him,’ Ida said, a sense of urgency gripping her.
‘Hey. Wait. Don’t ask him to stay if that’s not what you want.’
‘I love him, Mats.’
‘I know, but what’s changed in the five minutes since he left you here? Something’s holding you back and you can’t ignore that. You can deal with it so you can move on, but you can’t brush over it and hope it won’t matter. I know you, Ida. If you didn’t ask him to stay, there’s a good reason.’
‘He’s already had his heart broken, Mats. If he stays and I help him mend it, that’s no good for him. I have so much grief inside me still, I’m not going to be able to do that. We’re no good for each other until we’re both in better places. And I think we have to do that for ourselves.’
‘You’re sure?’
A fresh tear ran down Ida’s cheek, but she nodded. It was the right thing to do.
Erik had checked out by the time Ida got back to the hotel. She ran upstairs to his room, desperate for something to connect her to him. Because knowing she’d done the right thing and feeling at peace with that wasn’t clicking into place for her.
His bed was made, and aside from the sheets being a little more rumpled than if housekeeping had made the bed, there was no sign of him.
Ida lay on the bed and buried her face in the pillow, inhaling his scent.
The image of him smiling sleepily at her as they’d woken here together only a couple of days ago came to her.
She’d never have that again now. She’d ruined it.
The only person who might ever have loved her, apart from her family.
And all for the sake of not being able to tell him how badly she needed him.
Ida stirred when there was a knock at the door. Had she fallen asleep? She turned over and saw the door open and Emilie’s head appear.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine. I must have fallen asleep.’ If Emilie was here, it was past lunchtime, but the horror she ought to feel having unintentionally slept for a couple of hours was dulled by the ache in her chest, knowing that Erik wasn’t here anymore.
It was a feeling she knew well. Was heartbreak the same as grief?
Emilie slipped inside and perched on the edge of the bed. ‘I spoke to Mats. Me and Magnus are going to cover for you so you can have some time off.’
‘I don’t need time off.’ The absolute worst thing she could imagine would be not to be busy. ‘I’m fine now. I just needed a moment.’
She sat up and shuffled off the end of the bed into the bathroom.
The scent of a freshly showered Erik hit her as she looked at her reflection in the mirror.
She looked awful, and not because her eyes were still red from crying, but because the happiness she’d injected back into her life through working on the island and then from being with Erik was gone.
It had physically drained from her body the moment Erik walked away from her in the woods.
‘Right, let’s get back to work,’ she said as brightly as she could.
Emilie looked at her dubiously. ‘Even if you took the rest of today…’
They headed downstairs together, and Ida sat behind the reception desk, trying to remember what her job was.
‘He left this for you.’ Emilie handed her an old brown envelope with faded, spidery writing on the front, and all Ida could do was walk straight out of the front door of the hotel and into the woods before she started crying again.