Currently, Liisa was resting in Florida before she’d make the train journey to join Astrid in New York.

“Why Florida?” Kennet asked.

Astrid paused. “We have friends who offered to host her.”

This didn’t add up. “Wasn’t it expensive to travel all the way from Rio to Florida?”

Again Astrid’s demeanor went tense and distracted. She wanted to tell more, but something had a hold on her.

There’s a secret here, Kennet thought. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m being rude and nosy.”

“No, no,” she said. “You’re easy to talk to, but it’s hard to find the words when you’ve never felt free to talk of such things.”

“You must worry about your mother.”

“I promised my father I’d take care of her.” A wistful smile. “Did you promise your mother, too?”

“In a way. She was more worried about Nalle than Paps.”

“Did you get to say goodbye? Or did she die when you were away?”

“I had some last moments. I sat on the floor so my head was right on a level with hers. And she told me things…” He ran fingertips over his brow. “The whole while, she was doing this. She wasn’t a cuddly, petting person. Usually she only touched my forehead if she thought I had a fever. So the memory of her caressing me that way is strong.”

Emotion pressed him on all sides as he remembered the gentle touch and Ingrid’s serene, unblinking gaze. She was doped to hell on morphine at the end, and her words fell soft and measured, like dripping water from a loose tap. As she stroked Kennet’s eyebrows, she said she was leaving him her engagement ring in her will, for him to give to his fiancée. He’d be head of the family someday, and Ingrid always knew he’d do a fine job. Her hand smoothed his hair, and she asked him to take special care of Trudy and Kirsten, and to let Marta stay as long as she wished. She closed her eyes and said she worried about Minor, because the world could be cruel toward things it didn’t understand. Then she gave a tiny, loopy chuckle and tapped the end of Kennet’s nose, declaring that Little was going to surprise everyone someday. Just watch.

But when she got to Nalle, tears gathered along Ingrid’s sparse lashes and she couldn’t go on. Now it was Kennet who reached soft fingers and touched his mother in a way he never had before. Tracing her damp eyelids, her cheekbones, the straight line of her nose and the sharp ridge of her brow.

“Kind lady,” he murmured.

“Pardon?” Astrid said.

“Nothing, I was just remembering. Did you get to say goodbye to your father?”

“No, I was at school.” She drew a deep breath. “I was also in a bit of a disgrace. I did something stupid.”

“Oh.”