Chapter 18
After Lenny leaves, Alice and I come back inside and find the others hard at work in the kitchen. It looks and smells like they’ve been baking for the past hour.
“What’s all this?” I ask, surveying the space.
“Fika,” Hannah announces, waving her arms over a smorgasbord of sweet treats.
“A coffee break?” I say, recalling the Swedish bakeries in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago.
“Oh, but it’s so much more than that,” Johanna promises.
She goes on to tell us that in Sweden, fika is both a noun and a verb.
It’s a ritual, a midday break for coffee and sweet treats, but also socialization and conversation.
Getting together with an old friend to fika is common.
She says some employment contracts in Sweden even include a clause guaranteeing workers the right to fika during the business day.
The word fika comes from an old Swedish word for “coffee,” she explains.
“It’s therapeutic,” Nora adds. “It seems off task, but it actually boosts productivity and well-being.”
After listening to the girls’ description, I realize fika is something I enjoy often without even realizing it.
Around midday, my mind and body usually request it—a subtle headache develops, a tension in my shoulders—and I need a restorative cup of coffee or tea and something sweet before tackling the rest of my day.
“You don’t need an excuse for fika, but we certainly have one,” Katrine adds. “Brady told us the good news. We’re so happy to stay longer and continue the camp. So we’re celebrating.”
Alice and I help finish the fika preparations by moving everything to the kitchen table. The seven of us move as parts of one unit, an energetic flow working in tandem. The communal vibe overcomes me with a sense of hope.
Anything feels possible.
We talk and laugh over coffee and the delicious Scandinavian treats—almond bars, honey cardamom cake, and lemon elderflower tarts.
I find out my daughter has been with them in the kitchen all afternoon, washing dirty bowls, measuring spices, and applying egg wash to the bar dough carefully with a brush.
“So the almonds stick good,” Hannah explains.
My daughter’s expression—wide eyes and a narrowed brow, the perfect blend of determination and curiosity—gives me pause. What a wonderful experience the Scandi Trio gifted her this afternoon, the opportunity to tinker in the kitchen.
I turn my bar upside down. “Yes, those sliced almonds are very stuck.”
After we linger at the table, I feel renewed, inspired. I think of all the new quality ingredients I have from the shopping trip this morning with Brady, and an idea comes to mind.
“We should celebrate more,” I announce. “With a special dinner. Tomorrow night.”
Brady looks to the Scandinavian Trio, then back at me. “Who told you?” he asks.
“Told me what?”
Katrine clears her throat as she stacks dishes. “Tomorrow is Professor Shaw’s birthday.”
My eyes dart to his. “It’s your birthday? Tomorrow?”
He nods, sheepishly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“There’s kind of a lot going on.” He shrugs. “When you said ‘special dinner’ just now, I assumed one of the girls told you.”
I shake my head. “I just thought before classes start back up Friday, we should have this really memorable meal together. I had a vision of it just now.”
“The power of fika,” Johanna says, collecting forks for the dishwasher.
“Maybe.” I smile. “I saw it so clearly, all of us, outside on the porch.”
“Like in a movie?” Nora asks.
“Oh, like the patio lunch scene in Chocolat?” Katrine chimes in.
Brady laughs. “You want to ladle chocolate sauce over roast chicken?”
“Maybe not exactly that,” I say. “But like that. Sumptuous. Decadent. A feast.”
“Then I’m in,” Brady says. “But let’s make it less about my birthday and about all of us spending time together. It could be like the staff meal at the restaurants I used to work at, where we’d all sit down to eat before the start of the shift. It grounded us before the storm.”
“How old are you going to be, Brady?” Alice asks as she loads the dishwasher.
He pauses. “Forty.”
“Forty?” I exclaim, playfully punching his good arm.
I can think of only one dish: Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic.
I mentally run through what I need to make the entrée, which is a kind of fricassee, a fancy French word for a stew made of browned chicken in a creamy sauce.
Garlic, when raw, can often be bitter and overpowering, but when cooked in this dish, it’s surprisingly sweet and buttery.
The recipe creates a rich, flavorful sauce that tastes simultaneously light and smooth.
I recall what I bought today with Brady—fresh chicken from the farm and a bottle of sauvignon blanc from the gift shop at the mill that I can use to make the sauce.
I also bought fresh thyme and garlic—six beautiful heads still attached to the papery husks—from Sally’s farm.
I realize I bought almost all the ingredients for this dish without even knowing I was going to make it.
It seems meant to be. I will need cognac, but Alice has a well-stocked liquor cabinet, and heavy cream, which I know she also keeps on hand.
When I tell the group my menu idea, it’s greeted with enthusiasm. Inspired by the developing theme—which seems to be French, specifically Provence—they each take on a component of the meal.
Since it’s Brady’s birthday and he has only one good hand, we give him the easiest job: purchasing goat cheeses for a predinner cheese board.
Katrine feels inspired to prepare a salad Nicoise, sans tuna, with a mustardy herb vinaigrette, providing a much-needed acidic element to counteract the rich cream sauce.
Nora offers to bake some crusty bread for mopping up the sauce.
Alice suggests that with all the flavor in the chicken and salad, a simple vegetable—like haricots verts—is in order, and Hannah agrees to assist her. I think she may just like saying “haricots verts,” which she repeats on a loop.
That leaves dessert. I offer up the dried lavender I purchased earlier, which Johanna eagerly volunteers to use for a strawberry-lavender layer cake.
With tomorrow’s dinner plans in place, and the kitchen tidy, the girls ask to run to the market to grab a few more essentials. Alice offers to drive them, and Hannah tags along.
And then, it’s just me and Brady.
He looks at me intently.
“What?” I finally ask.
“You. You’re bursting at the seams.”
I suddenly question whether I showed too much enthusiasm. Sometimes, this happened with Sean. I’d overwhelm him with my energy, my passion.
“I should dial it down a notch?” I say, a question in my tone.
He grips my arm. “Maggie, no. I was going to say it’s like you . . . came alive today. Something is different about you. It’s in your eyes. In your voice.”
I know he’s right; I feel it too. This stirring ball of energy, like a bear suddenly waking from hibernation. I’m so hungry. For good food, but also for life, for the days to come. For the potential right in front of me.
I remember my conversation with the Scandi Trio the other day about hygge: cozy comfort, a sense of purpose, following your hopes and dreams, being true to yourself.
“I think I know what it is,” I say.
Brady raises his eyebrows.
“I’m happy.”
Brady’s birthday dinner is everything I imagined.
Every one of my senses engages, feels heightened.
The dinner table is beautifully set by Katrine, using Alice’s pale-pink linen napkins, white tapered candles, and Mason jar bouquets of flowers crafted by Hannah.
I watch the pure pleasure on everyone’s faces through the soft glow of late-day sun and candlelight, their mouths delighted by the balanced but robust flavors of the food, their hearts warmed by the laughter and camaraderie of this shared meal.
“Time for ‘Happy Birthday,’” Johanna sings, popping up from the table to grab the cake, a stunning lavender-scented masterpiece atop a white cake pedestal.
It’s worthy of a magazine shoot. Katrine and Nora quickly clear our dinner dishes and set a pretty dessert plate and clean fork before each of us.
“Where did these come from?” I ask, inspecting the forget-me-not floral pattern and golden scrollwork on the plates.
“Rose, my grandmother,” Alice says. “These are from the collection I found in storage. I assume she and her boardinghouse residents once enjoyed desserts off these plates, and I thought it only fitting we should too.”
Brady, who sits beside me, eyes his cake. “This is gorgeous, Johanna.”
“Thank you.” She lets out a nervous giggle. “You know, it is very daunting to bake a birthday cake for your pastry instructor. Let’s just hope it tastes as good as it looks,” she adds.
He stares at the cake a beat longer, his expression wistful. I wonder what he’s thinking. Birthdays can be painfully reflective, and the milestone years even more so. They bring up the questions we avoid asking ourselves the rest of the year.
Namely, am I where I should be at this point of my life?
I wonder what Brady wants, deep in his heart.
His expression softens. “Now that’s a lot of candles,” he says.
“Forty,” Katrine notes, as she begins to light them. “We counted every one.”
We sing “Happy Birthday” to Brady, and now it’s his turn to look around the table and study our faces in appreciation.
Mine is the last, and he lingers before blowing out all his candles to our cheers.
Johanna and Katrine work together to cut and serve the cake, while Nora returns with a pot of coffee and cups and saucers.
One bite of the cake, and I let out an audible sigh.
It’s early summer on a plate. The strawberry—freshly picked from local fields—is sweeter than candy and the lavender adds a floral depth to both the filling and the frosting.
Meanwhile, the white cake is so light—a sponge cake made with egg whites—that it melts in my mouth.
With our bellies full, it would be easy to sit at the table for a good while. Then Hannah spots a yellow glow in the yard that disappears and reappears. And then another.
“Fireflies,” she cries.
“Want to catch them?” Katrine asks.
Hannah is already out of her seat.
Nora and Johanna start to clear the dessert plates, but Alice stops them. “Ladies, go with Hannah and Katrine and catch fireflies. I’ll clear the dishes.”
The girls smile and laugh as they skip down the porch steps with Hannah.
I reach to collect the dessert forks, but Alice also stops me. “You too. Relax. Enjoy.”
Brady shifts in his chair. “Alice, really, let us help.”
“Brady, I am an old woman,” she asserts. “If I say I want to do it, then I want to do it. Nothing would make me happier than to know you two could enjoy the end of this beautiful meal together on the porch. I’m cleaning up, and that’s that.”
She heads into the house with a stack of dishes before we can argue.
After a moment of silence, with the girls’ distant laughter in the background, Brady speaks first. “I don’t want this night to end,” he says.
The candlelight seems to glimmer in his brown eyes. They’re so captivating, I have to look away. “Me neither,” I say.
He takes my hand in his, and playfully caresses my wrist with his thumb.
“So classes start up again here tomorrow,” he starts. “Allen may have been clumsy and forgetful, but he still did a lot of prep. I need an assistant.”
“I can help,” I say.
His eyes widen. “Really?”
“Well, tomorrow at least. But then I’m going home this weekend, so maybe Katrine and the girls can take turns being sous-chef during the week. I’m sure Alice can chip in too.”
Brady looks away and slowly nods.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He sighs. “I don’t know why—I guess it was wishful thinking—but when you said you could help, I thought you meant you were staying,” he says.
“For the next month?” My heart sinks. “But I have to go back to work on Monday.”
His eyes fall to his lap. “Yeah, of course you do.”
It’s the reality I’ve been avoiding all week, while I rescued Brady and the girls from the hospital, and shopped at the mill and dairy farm, and made elaborate breakfasts, and even more elaborate dinners.
It’s been fun, like playing. But I’ve been living in a fantasy.
Because I can’t stay. I have to go back to real life.
This was a vacation—one I hadn’t planned to take—and it’s ending.
I don’t get a gap month or gap summer or gap year.
I have a real life, with real responsibilities. A career. A mortgage. A child to rear.
“If I could stay, I would,” I add, apologetically.
He doesn’t say anything, just nods.
I let go of his hand and get up then, suddenly unable to sit and be in the moment.
I can’t look at him, can’t process his disappointment.
There are still dishes on the table, and I start to grab them and stack, scraping off bits of frosting, clattering the forks.
I sense that Brady is unsure of what to say or do.
Just as I turn to bring the dishes into the house, he stands, and stops me.
“Maggie.”
I look into his eyes even though I’m afraid of what I’ll see there.
And then he kisses me. The plates rest in my hands between us, but my clenched shoulders fall, and I lose my breath. The taste of him—sweet, laced with birthday cake frosting—and the woodsy scent of his beard swirl together. I feel intoxicated, the backs of my knees turning into mush.
When he pulls back from the embrace, I look into his eyes again but say nothing. I am certain I have never been kissed like that.
Not even by Sean.
I’m at a loss for words. Fortunately, he does all the talking.
“I imagined you leaving in two days,” he says, tucking a stray hair behind my ear. “And I knew I’d regret not kissing you, at least once.”
And then he walks away, following the path the girls took earlier. I watch him descend the front steps, and want to call out after him.
Instead, I let him disappear into the darkness.