Although some might see their friendship as unnatural, he thought.

“What’s it like here in the winter?”

“Quiet. Slow and sleepy. The river has a whole different look. Summer is a showy time of year. Fall is really beautiful, when the leaves change. But winter is stark and sparse. It’s still painted in a hundred colors. You just have to look harder to see them.”

He’d always found it hard to articulate his love for the river, how it never looked the same two days in a row. As if every day were a gold coin counted by Old Nick. Or a song composed by Fossegrim. Or, if he were in a morbid mood, a life claimed by Hildur. Every day the river rolled along in a different look, with an endless supply of stories and songs and lives.

Astrid was looking at him.

I want to kiss you, he thought, as his mouth saved him with a question. “What’s winter like in Brazil?”

“It’s winter right now,” she said.

“Of course,” he said quickly, though he’d completely forgotten the seasons were opposite on the other side of the equator. Which made him think how she’d be going home in a couple weeks, to another country on another continent in another hemisphere. He’d put so much emotional investment into her arrival, he’d forgotten to factor any into her leaving.

“What’s the matter?” Astrid said softly.

He shook his head and wiped his hands off. “Nothing, I just remembered something. This is done now. Let’s go see about lunch, before the next train comes in.”

They ambled up the street toward the Fisher Hotel.

“Your grandfather built the hotel?”

“He built it, but it was really my grandmother’s creation. She was a woman ahead of her time. See the wing of the dining room? It used to be a ladies’ tea room. Back in the eighteen nineties, women couldn’t go into bars or taverns. All the ladies getting off the train and waiting for a ferry, or getting off a ferry waiting for a train, they just had to wait at the depot. Barely a place to sit, let alone have something to eat or drink. So Marianne had my grandfather build a little annex off the hotel. It was only for women and children, and only women worked there. They served tea and sandwiches and ice cream, and it was a smash.”

“Is your grandmother still alive?”

“Yes. She lives in Montreal now. She has a cottage out on Grennell Island and used to come for the whole summer. But I think after my grandfather died, it just wasn’t the same for her. And she hasn’t been in the best of health. She only came a few weeks this year. Major’s been renting her cottage out. He has a little place on Grennell, too. I’ll take you by and show it to you.”