Epilogue
No one had warned Sarah that Copenhagen could be warm in September. For some reason, her stereotypes about Scandinavian weather had not helped her out when she packed three suitcases for the private plane ride to Denmark.
So when she stepped out of her therapist’s office wearing a turtleneck, trousers, and a heavy coat only to meet blasting sunlight and locals wearing T-shirts, her first inclination was to bemoan this fate.
But she really didn’t have anything to bemoan. One month ago, she moved into Lucas’s historical home in Copenhagen. Five bedrooms, a chef’s kitchen, and enough charm to give those home-improvement shows back in America something to pine after. Everyone was so friendly in Denmark that she almost wondered what she was doing wrong to make them passive-aggressively treat her so nicely. Then she realized that they were genuinely that nice… and that included after finding out that she was American.
She wasn’t employed, and outside of occasionally helping her boyfriend with administrative matters, she had no immediate plans to look for any kind of job or even start her own business. Her schedule was packed enough. Danish lessons with a private tutor, therapy with an English speaker who spent more time helping her adjust to culture shock than getting to her “root causes,” and enough sights to see to sate her for the rest of her life.
That’s when Lucas wasn’t taking up her time. With romance. With sight-seeing. With parenting, because Victor lived with them most of the week.
Speaking of Victor, Sarah was tasked with something important that day. Lucas was at an important business meeting, and the Danish nanny they hired to look after Victor when the parents were out had a family emergency. As soon as Sarah arrived home, the nanny was off to catch the bus – and Victor still had to go to his afternoon classes.
The nanny had packed his things, made sure Victor was dressed, and left whatever Sarah needed to remember by the front door. She didn’t even have to take off her shoes.
She also didn’t have to call for Victor. He was already waiting for her in the foyer, kicking his feet from his chair. At least his face lit up when he saw her.
“Ready to go?” Sarah asked. “We’ve got about fifteen minutes to get there, and it takes a while to walk, remember?”
He didn’t say anything. Victor wasn’t a big talker, especially around Sarah, but he never hesitated to take her hand and follow her out the door. The way Lucas explained it was, “If he sees I don’t have a problem with you, then neither does he.” Victor took to his new nanny as quickly, much to everyone’s relief.
This made it sound like Victor wasn’t a shy child. On the contrary, he was only fine around adults. It was other children that brought out his shyness, as demonstrated when they reached the classroom gates a few blocks away.
He stopped in the middle of the path, his grip on Sarah’s hand faltering.
“What’s wrong?” She redoubled her efforts to hold his hand. “Don’t you want to go play with your friends?”
One of the teachers stepped out of the door and waved to Victor. “God eftermiddag, Victor!” This bilingual school was built to immerse young children in both English and Danish, a handy accomplishment for a small child who still wasn’t used to most Danish, regardless of how much his father tried to teach it to him. “Are you coming inside today?”
He looked away, too shy to face anyone. It didn’t help that a few rowdy kids his age tore around the schoolhouse behind the teacher.
“Just a second.” Sarah said to the teacher before kneeling in front of Victor. “Don’t you want to go inside? Looks pretty fun in there.”
His pout reminded her so much of Lucas that she wanted to laugh. “Sarah?”
“Yeah?”
“Why couldn’t Mom bring me today?”
“Well…” Damnit. Why did she always get these questions when Lucas wasn’t around? “Because your mom is busy at the doctor’s.” Part of the agreement to bring Jill over to Copenhagen was that she had to attend counseling for her addiction three times a week. She was at one of her appointments now. “Like I was busy at my doctor’s before I came home.”
“Oh.” That was the response she always got from him. “Can you come with me?”
“The school’s for kids unless you’re a teacher, but I can come pick you up when it’s over.”
“Will Dad come?”
“He can come too. He should be home by then.”
“Okay. You promise?”
“I promise that at least I will be here to pick you up when you’re done with class. How does that sound?”
He smiled. “Ice cream?”
“We’ll see what your dad says about that.”
She stood back up and presented Victor to the teacher on the other side of the gate. “Sorry about that. He’s shy, you know.”
“He’s getting so much better about it, though, aren’t you, Victor?”
Sarah left by herself, but not before texting Lucas to tell him Victor expected the both of them later. Also something about ice cream.
“Last time he had ice cream before dinner, he didn’t finish dinner,” Lucas pointed out.
“Go easy on him. He’s adjusting to a new place. He’s already shy around other kids, let alone kids speaking Danish.”
“Are you sure you’re not the one who wants ice cream?”
“The more we talk about it, the more I want it, honestly.”
“You’re the same way about other things, you know.”
Sarah scoffed at the intersection she stood at. Leave it to her boyfriend to bring up sex when they were talking about ice cream.
(He was right, though.)
He met her at a café halfway between the school and his office, right on time to go pick up Victor from his afternoon class.
“You look so European I almost don’t recognize you.”
Sarah closed her Danish study book and accepted a kiss from her bespoke-clad boyfriend. She let her fingers linger on the fine tailoring of his suit before finally releasing him. “I am half-British, if I may remind you.” She had a passable accent, too, but her mannerisms gave her away as an American to the locals. “How are you doing?”
“The meeting was… well, it was a meeting.”
“Let’s go get your son.”
“And ice cream?”
“Hell yes.”
“You know,” Lucas said, leading her by the hand. “He’s not just my son now. You’re practically his step-mother.”
Chills went down Sarah’s spine. “I don’t recall anything official about that.”
“He lives with us. You live with us.” Lucas squeezed her hand. “If anyone asks, I see you as his step-mother. Is there something wrong with that?”
“It implies that we’re married.”
They were silent the rest of the way to the school. Five minutes remained before class was officially over and the students released to their waiting parents. Some sat in their cars in the parking lots. Others milled around the gate, speaking Danish – Sarah still wasn’t good enough to pick up what they were talking about. Lucas was the only man there.
“We could be, you know.”
Sarah turned toward him. “Could be what?”
“Married.”
His sincerity struck her. While Sarah didn’t doubt he would propose to her one day… like this? In front of a bilingual school while bored Danish mothers looked on? No, no, he’s not really proposing to me. That was absurd.
Sarah convinced herself of that until the bastard got down on one knee.
“Oh my God.” She turned around. So did most of the mothers waiting around. Oh my God! She couldn’t take it! “Stop fooling around, Luke. Your son is coming out here at any moment.”
“I’d much prefer it if you’d call him our son, Sarah.”
“Seriously! Stop playing around!” She tried to take her hand away. She ended up turning around in a huff to see Victor standing on the other side of the gate, accompanied by the same Danish teacher from earlier.
He looked between his kneeling father and the irate woman in front of him. “Are you asking Sarah to marry you?”
“Oh, no.” Lucas quickly got up and attempted to blow it over. The other women muttered things in flippant Danish. “I dropped something, son. Are you ready to go?”
Despondency took over the poor boy’s pudgy countenance. Sarah instantly regretted how this situation played out – in public, no less.
Victor rushed to his father’s hug and wasted no time crawling up into his arms. Lucas held his son to the side, commenting that soon enough the boy would be too big to hold. True. Victor was on the small side for a boy his age, but Sarah didn’t doubt the growth spurts would hit hard and fast as the months went by. Lucas was smart to take what he could get right now.
As mothers loaded their kids into cars, onto bicycles, or held their hands as they walked down the street, Sarah took the moment to join Lucas and Victor by the gate.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Lucas, who had been promising their son that they would soon get ice cream, turned toward Sarah. “Hm?”
She wasn’t laughing as much as he was. “If you were serious about that… then yes.”
The smile fell off Lucas’s face. “I would never joke about something like that.”
“Yes.” Sarah brushed her hand against Lucas’s hair. “You need to make an honest immigrant out of me, anyway.”
Lucas would properly propose to her later that night, long after Victor went to bed and the happy couple were allowed a spare moment on the balcony overlooking parts of Copenhagen Sarah still had yet to explore. The choice was easy. Of course she would marry him. What elated her the most was that it was her choice to begin with.
The road to her empowerment was paved with nothing but choices. Good choices. Bad choices. Choices she would never see a return from, and choices that affected her life almost immediately.
Nevertheless, they were her choices to make.
THE END
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