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To that day, her great embarrassment was that she always answered,“I wanna have a gift shop and make tourists happy.”Was that any more embarrassing than becoming an accountant instead? She didn’t make anyone happy. Just relieved. Or incredibly angry.
So silly.Tove hadn’t grown up with the name Fredriksson, gone to Lewis & Clark, and apprenticed at some of Portland’s top accounting firms to be ashopkeeper.She knew better than most how financially unsound that kind of business was. For every Trudy, who made a steady living and consistently grew her business over the years, there was a Warner’s Gifts or a Beekeeper’s Gallery that went under in fewer than three years.
Yet the life had always appealed to her. Shops were tangible. People came in wanting to spend money. Happiness was a bag in the hand and a wave at the door. Tove could more easily set her hours while keeping a hands-on approach to what she did. Owning a place like Trudy’s could beherretirement. Except, with her luck, she’d burn it to the ground in months.
Like some adults who had to set aside aspirations of music, acting, and art, Tove accepted that she would always be an accountant.
She saw the black BMW creeping by her before she reached her office, where Thomas had parked right in front of the door. He stepped out with a shake of his jacket and a slight trip on the sidewalk as he made awkward eye contact with his cousin.
“You’re not my one o’clock,” Tove said, unlocking the door. “I think you’re next week.”
Thomas followed her into the office without invitation. Tove did not shoo him away as the rest of the lights came on and she hung her jacket up on the coat rack near the waiting area. Thomas did not sit down – always a great sign of a greater conversation to come.
“I stopped by to catch up with my favorite cousin.” Thomas’s arms were crossed over his suit jacket. With her computer monitor flickering to life, Tove sat down at her desk and searched for the files necessary for her next appointment. Someone from town was coming in to hear the damage before signing off on what he owed both the IRS and the state of Oregon. “You know,” Thomas continued, “find out what’s going on in her life.”
Tove placed her fists on a manila folder and gave her cousin her undivided attention. “What are you talking about?”
“My mom knows about your fling, and she told Aunt Kiersten, who is the one I heard it from.”
If Tove had been holding a pen, she would have dropped it on the floor. Good thing her next client’s folder wasn’t in her hand, either, because she would have dumped his tax files all over her desk. “Excuse me?” she whispered.
“Good job hiding your younger girlfriend for as long as you have, cous.” Thomas enjoyed a stroll back and forth before Tove’s desk. “How long has it been since you met her? About a month? Forgive me. This past month has been a total blur since I got back with Polly.”
“Back up, please.” Tove removed her reading glasses the moment she put them on. “Your mom knows that I’m seeing someone? And she toldAunt Kiersten?”
“If you were trying to keep it on the down-low, you screwed up. Mom saw you canoodling at Giuseppe’s a few days ago. According to a very scandalized Aunt Kiersten, you two were pretty hot and heavy.”
“We werenot.” Even though, if this was the date Tove thought of, Kayla had shown up wearing the same white dress from that fated night.It was all I could do to keep from pawing at her in public.Something about that short skirt and the keyhole in the bodice made her more devilish than a teenager who had discovered sex. Yet Tove had refrained. They barely kissed or held hands in public, because Tove would rather die than have Kayla introduced to the Fredriksson family under any circumstance than her own. This idea that she and Kayla were making out in the dimly-lit Italian eatery on Sunday night was preposterous. The “scandal” was nothing more than Aunt Gretchen seeing Tove and Kayla leaning in close to one another and laughing about their childhood misadventures.I didn’t touch her until we got back to my place.That dress never stayed on for long, did it?
“So you admit you’re seeing someone?” Thomas asked.
“That’s…”
“Specifically, you’re seeing the girl I brought here foryouto take care of?”
Put it that way, and it makes me want to whisk Kayla away from here more.“I’d say it’s none of your business,” she said with an even voice dripping in warning, “but I know how this family works. Your period can’t be two days late without whoever’s in charge wailing about you being pregnant!”
“Hey, no need to throw Polly back in my face. It turned out her iron levels were simply too low to… you know.”
“What? Menstruate? You can say that word, Thomas.”
“Point being the whole family knows now that Aunt Kiersten knows. What are you gonna do about it, Tove?”
“Not react, because that’s what you want me to do.”
“Please, I love a good trainwreck that deflects from my own mess, but I like being on your good side. You’re the one person in this whole family that doesn’t take any joy in me screwing up.”
“The irony of what you said…”
“Come on, Tove! You’re dating a woman young enough to be your daughter! That’s something I would do! Or Oskar! Or Bjorn. Or Eddy…”
I get it already.Tove was behaving like a Fredriksson heir, all right, but not the proper kind. Thomas, Oskar, Bjorn, Eddy, and the others got away with having affairs with the help, earning DUIs, and covertly paying child support to kids they didn’t publicly claim because they were men. Young, dumb men who eventually matured into older, still dumb men, if their last name happened to be Fredriksson. It was a story as old as the mid-century when Gustav’s oldest son crashed his car when racing a cousin and spent the rest of his life “making the most of it.” That included four wives, three mistresses, two stints in county jail for fighting and more reckless driving, and one offshore bank account that may or may not have founded a Mexican cartel’s human trafficking ring.I’m looking at that man’s youngest grandson right now.No matter how many outsider genetics the Fredrikssons brought in, shit continued to happen.
“She’s also a known quantity because you had me take her to Oskar and paid for her check-ups to be undocumented,” Thomas continued at a lower clip. “It doesn’t look great, Tove. Aunt Kiersten already greatly dislikes unvetted outsiders, especially younger ones. Remember what happened when I first brought Polly home? The woman did her damndest to break us up, and it’s what led to us eloping way too soon.”
“It’s hardly like that at all.”
“You’re also gay, cous.”
