CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Sanna searched the refrigerator for the extra butter she knew her dad had bought and opened the crisper drawer to a surprise—a bag full of twigs from the Dancing Tree. She’d stashed one in the house, hoping one of her storage options would make a difference in the success of the grafts. She pulled a stick out of the bag and smiled when she realized it was still viable. It hadn’t dried and shriveled like all her previous attempts had—in fact, each baggie that she and Isaac and Bass and Einars and Anders had packed that horrible night had been viable. Somehow, grafting the Looms had become possible. Was she crazy to think it was the kiss that did it?
She set aside the bag with the stick on top of the counter. She’d deal with it after she found the butter.
“Pa, where’d you put the butter?”
Einars sat in front of the fireplace with Anders. Gabby and Sarah played hide-and-seek in the bedrooms with the Dibble boys, their occasional giggles and racing footsteps eliciting laughter and reprimands from the adults. Mrs. Dibble had promptly taken over the kitchen and bossed Sanna and Julie around like the miniature general she was. She’d even put Eva to work creating a centerpiece for the table from a box of table decorations. Mrs. Dibble had been horrified that Sanna had been letting Einars cook, what with his injuries and all. Sanna tried to point out that the injury was almost five months ago, and he cooked every night, but Mrs. Dibble put a peeler in her hand and pointed to the potatoes. She’d been assigned to the safe mashed-potato duty while Julie got the much more complicated gravy assignment.
It had been over a month and a half since Bass and Isaac had left, and Sanna still felt the hole in her chest where they belonged. She missed Bass’s unending questions and silly fart jokes. She missed Isaac’s brightness—especially now that the days were getting shorter and she’d be spending so much more time indoors. They’d connected online now that she had to take charge of the orchard’s site—so she saw the occasional picture of them, but it wasn’t the same. She couldn’t smell him through a picture or run her fingers through his hair.
She thought back to their last night. She didn’t regret one second of their time together—the memories had held her together when their absence almost pulled her apart. She’d tried to keep her heart open, like she’d promised. She even went on a horrible date. She’d spent the entire evening comparing the poor guy to Isaac, and the unsuspecting fellow came up short in every category. He wasn’t tall, he wasn’t funny, he wasn’t dark-haired. He wasn’t Isaac.
“Pa, where is the butter? How many times do I have to ask?”
As she spoke, Mrs. Dibble ducked under Sanna’s arm that held the door wide open and grabbed it off the top shelf.
“Here, honey.” She handed the blue box of butter to Sanna. “Sometimes it’s hard to see things in front of you when what you want to see is so far away.”
Then she returned to buzzing around the kitchen.
Mrs. Dibble was right. Sanna wasn’t heartbroken, but she wasn’t whole either. She peeled the butter out of its wrapper and slowly chopped it into sad, misshapen slices.
“Can’t you ever cut things even?”
Sanna set down the knife and turned, a part of her worried her fantasies had now progressed to hearing his voice aloud, because she wanted to so badly.
But Isaac and Bass really were standing at the end of the counter. Snowflakes dotted their dark curls and his beard, which was neatly trimmed. His warm eyes soaked her in as she stood and stared. All the other adults gathered around to greet the returned pair, and the kids whisked Bass off to play. Sanna still just stood there, happily drowning in the sight of him as he smiled and laughed, bending down to let Mrs. Dibble bestow a kiss on his whiskered cheek. Einars took his coat, and Anders poured him a glass of mulled cider. As the crowd dispersed, Isaac stepped closer, his eyebrows raised in question because Sanna still hadn’t said a word.
Finally she spoke. “Can you stay for Thanksgiving dinner?” But that wasn’t what she meant. She took a deep breath and tried again. “How long will you be visiting?”
Isaac took another step toward her until he was only a foot away.
“Yes, and I’m not just visiting.” Another few inches closer. “Einars offered me a job. I accepted.” Another few inches.
“You’re here to stay?”
“I’m here to stay.”
The hole in Sanna’s chest didn’t fill up, it healed as if it had never been there to begin with. She closed the last few inches between them and wrapped her arms around his neck, drawing his face to hers. She heard her family snicker, but she didn’t care. Isaac’s arms found her back, his broad hands pulling her closer to him, and then she didn’t hear anything. She only felt his warmth and love, and his beard tickling her cheeks between kisses. He pulled away.
“We had to go all the way home to realize we had just left it. That’s not home anymore, this is. You are. I love you. We love you. Are we too late?”
She touched the curls on his head, his scruffy beard, his broad shoulders. She could barely believe he was real, that he was really here to stay.
“No. No, you’re not too late. I love you, too. You bring everything around you to life. You brought me to life.”
She kissed him one more time as he nodded, recklessly, knowing this time, it didn’t need to last her a lifetime. She now had an endless supply of kisses and plenty of time to give them.
Eventually, Sanna and Isaac joined everyone at the table, not even noticing that the stick she’d laid on the counter, still poking out of its plastic bag, had burst into full bloom sometime in the last ten minutes.
Only Einars noticed the white petals with the soft pink blush and delicate yellow center that popped open when it had no right to. He turned to look at the large, happy family circling the turkey, laughing and smiling, bigger than they’d been in twenty years.
Happiness had returned to Idun’s.