“You better,” Trudy said. She’d inherited Ingrid’s plain looks but not Ingrid’s severity. She had Emil’s generous smile and the wicked twinkle in her pale grey eyes was pure Major.

“Promise you’ll be careful?” Kirsten said.

“I promise.” Kennet was a little alarmed at Kirsten’s burgeoning beauty. She was lively, but cool and circumspect for a thirteen-year-old. You could make her laugh, but good luck pulling her leg.

The only relationship Kennet struggled with was Marta. She didn’t seem herself and Kennet couldn’t tell if it was worry about the war and the boys, or worry about something practical like money or the roof or rationing. When he tried to pin her down, she waved him off.

But finally, one evening, it was the two of them alone in the kitchen and Marta was making pepparkakor. Kennet had a big cup of stewed, black tea to go with his cookies, and was a good ways into W. Somerset Maugham’s new book, The Razor’s Edge, slowly realizing he didn’t want to read about a soldier wounded and traumatized by the deaths of comrades in battle. The story was making his stomach hurt. He should go up to the attic and find his old, battered beloveds. Jungle Tales of Tarzan or Dr. Dolittle. Or even one of the Winnie-the-Pooh books, for crying out loud.

Marta closed the oven door and sank into a chair. “That’s the last batch,” she said, as if there would never again be any pepparkakor in the world.

Kennet closed the book and pushed it away. “Cheese on a cracker, are you going to tell me what’s the matter? And don’t say ‘nothing.’”

“All right.” She sighed, and then managed a wan smile. “Your Pa asked me to marry him.”

Kennet knocked over his cup, then quickly righted it. “He did what?”

“Your Pa asked—”

“I heard you. I’m sorry. He…”

“Yes.” She handed him a dish towel to mop up the tea.

“Oh.”

“Nobody knows yet. Except Major.” She picked up a cookie and broke it in half, but did nothing with the pieces..

“Major knows everything,” Kennet said absently.

“I wanted to talk to you first. Before telling anyone else.”

“Did you say yes?”

“I didn’t say anything. Not until I talked to you.”

“Why me?”

She swatted his upper arm. “Because you’re like a bloody brother to me,” she cried. Now she was herself, but in a distraught way. “What do you think? Oh Christ…”

“Well, when did this… I mean, how did… Holy shit, Marta.”

She held up her hands and let them fall. “I never would have thought. Not in a million years.”

“He’s quite a bit older than you.”

“I can count, thanks ever so much.”

“Do you love him?”