I wish there was something I could do, Kennet thought, and pressed down. His cookie broke in half.

Across the table, Astrid looked up at him, then held out her palm, where three pieces of pepparkakor lay.

“See now,” Marta said. “It will all sort out by Christmas.” She checked her watch. “I’ve got my errands to run. Kennet, I know a cookie won’t hold you, so there’s cold ham if you want a sandwich.”

Kennet expected Astrid to leave the kitchen as well, but she stayed, lingering over her tea.

“You could say I’m homesick,” she finally said. “Being here has made me realize how sick of home I am. And sick at heart at the thought of my mother coming here.”

He’d forgotten her mother was coming for the last week of the visit. After exercising such patience waiting for his siblings to get the hell out of the way, he bristled at the thought of another intruder. But aloud he only drawled a long, “Ah,” as if the mysteries of the universe were solved.

He took great pains with his sandwich making, stretching out the simple task to let her talk freely behind his back. She told him that when her father died, the hotel in Penedo was doing poorly. Under Liisa’s ownership, it utterly failed. Liisa sold the property, and the proceeds were enough to keep Astrid and the boarding school in Rio.

Kennet set down plates on the table. “What’s your mother like?”

“She’s a passionate Finn. The only thing truly Finnish about my father was his surname. He was a Swede at heart, but my mother loved her country and her culture. I don’t think she was ever the same after they fled to Sweden. And when my father moved us to South America, something in Mor died. Or rather, something in her was defeated. She personified defeat and forever passed herself off as a weak and victimized woman.”

Kennet wasn’t surprised Astrid used mor, mother, not Mamma or Ma.

Liisa Virtanen suffered asthma as a child, which worsened after Astrid’s birth. In between episodes of genuine suffering, Liisa used the ailment to her advantage.

“Conveniently her worst episodes occur when she’s not getting her way,” Astrid said. “Playing the romantic consumptive when she was in the rudest of health.”

She blushed a little and shook her head apologetically. Kennet could sense how it made her feel disloyal to speak honestly of her mother.

“It’s such a brutal end to your childhood idealism,” he said slowly, “when you realize you love your parent because not loving them isn’t an option, but you also discover things about your parent that aren’t lovable.”

“The stress about money is really making her sick now. But there’s nobody she can placate. Her poor health won’t make money appear out of thin air.”