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“Yes, I never think about it, though. Mostly I think that I only have a sister. The boys are different. They are older and were gone.” She took a sip of her pop.
“That’s how I feel about Julia. She is six years younger than me. I feel like she was little forever, and then suddenly, she was an adult.”
She nodded. “Yes, kind of like that. All my siblings were married before I turned ten.”
“Are you going to see them for Easter?” It was the coming weekend.
“Yes, I will head down there. I will be off that Monday to get back.”
“Where are they?”
“New Paris,” she said as if everyone had heard of it.
“Never heard of it.”
“Down my Rochester.”
“Minnesota?” he questioned. That wasn’t even close to here.
“Yes, it takes around nine hours to get there.” She took another sip of pop.
“How often do you see them?”
“Not often. I try to get there once a quarter, but some winters are bad, and in the summer, my employees need time off, so I have to work most Mondays and Fridays. Then I go earlier in the fall,” she explained, but he knew things like that wouldn’t keep him from going home, far more often than that if he didn’t live within ten miles of most of his family.
“When did you see them last?” he asked, realizing he had seen his parents just a few days before on Sunday.
She tapped her lips with her fork before answering, “Christmas was on a Wednesday, so traveling was out this year. I think mid-October I took two days off and went.”
“Not Thanksgiving?”
“No, the bank was open on Friday, and it is not a holiday my family celebrates.” She looked at her plate as if she was embarrassed to even admit it.
“We all have our quirks.” He tried to make her feel better about being different.
Whether it worked or not, she looked up and smiled as she set her fork down. “So where do Nordskov’s come from? Norway or Sweden? Seems like everyone here is from one or the other.”
It was true; there isn’t as much diversity in town. “Denmark. I am about seventy-five percent Danish with a dash of English to round me out. Thorn must be English. Tess, the English princess.”
She laughed at his joke. “Most likely. I do not know where it is from.”
He was surprised that she wasn’t even curious about it. “Haven’t you ever wanted to ask?”
“No. It is the only thing I kept after the divorce. Just his last name.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t important when we were married, and since then, I haven’t put much thought into it.
“How long have you been divorced?” He didn’t see her failing at anything, much less marriage.
“Fifteen years this year. We were only married nine months.”
“Divorce stinks.”
“How long for you?”
“Almost two years, three since she left.”
“Her choice, I am assuming.”
“Yup. I thought it was going okay.” He really didn’t want to talk about this with her, mostly because he didn’t want to talk about it with anyone.
