“When it comes to family, Kitty—I mean, Katharyn—hit the jackpot,” Mother said, snuggling Missy against her bosom. I smiled; my dear mother was trying her best with the Katharyn business, but I was pretty sure that I would always be Kitty to her. “My go-getting daughter went from career gal to mother of three in just over two years.”
I winced. I knew she meant well, but at the time I was unsure where that “career gal” business was headed. I was working at the shop full-time, with my mother and various hired babysitters taking over the triplets’ care during my working hours. We had tried a few full-time nannies, but none worked out; they generally left after a few days, proclaiming the job too difficult. Each time that happened, my mother swooped in until I could find someone else. But this revolving-door arrangement was taking its toll—on me, on my mother, on the babies, and, though he never said so, certainly on Lars.
Not to mention that Frieda was getting fed up with my wishy-washy stance on what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. And I couldn’t blame her, really. “You just need to decide,” she’d said more than once—hands on hips, lips pressed together in exasperation—when I was yet again being summoned home from the shop early by one family crisis or another. “You just need to figure it out, Kitty. What do you want? Because here’s a news flash—you can’t have it all, sister.”
Yvonne broke me out of these weighty thoughts. “We’re still hoping to be blessed with a bundle of joy . . . someday,” she said longingly, reaching out a tentative finger to stroke Mitch’s little blond head.
I nodded and asked her if she wanted to hold Mitch. She did . . . gratefully, as if she’d been given an unexpected gift. Mitch rewarded her with a sweet smile, a giggle, and the tug of a fistful of her dark hair into his mouth.
Later, back in our apartment, I remember praying—a little appeal to whoever might be listening—that Yvonne might have a child soon. It was several years before my prayer was answered and Kenny came along for them, but he did finally come along.
Oh, it’s all falling into place for me. I remember so much that I didn’t understand before.
But how is it possible that I can remember events from a life that never even happened?
Linnea’s voice brings me back to the present. “Goodness, you were off in dreamland,” she said. “I’ve been busy as a bunny here, and you’ve been a million miles away in your thoughts, madam.”
Busy as a bunny? I look at her quizzically, then remember how she mixes up American expressions. She must have meant a bee.
Linnea smiles playfully at me in the mirror and ties a plastic kerchief over my head. “Under the dryer you go, and then I’ll have you finished and out of here in a snip.”
“Linnea.” I reach over my shoulder and take hold of her warm, firm hand. She is startled into silence.
“I just wanted to say . . . I just . . . I’m sorry,” I tell her.
“Sorry for what, Kitty?”
“Sorry about your brother,” I go on hastily. I need to say this, no matter how absurd it might sound to her. “I feel . . . I don’t know, Linnea, I don’t know why, but I feel a connection with him, with you . . . and I’m just . . .” I look down, then back in the mirror, meeting her eyes. “I’m just sorry . . . I never met him. He sounds like a wonderful man. I think . . . I think we would have liked each other.”
Linnea nods slowly. “Lars should have had someone like you in his life,” she says. “I wish that he had. It would have made all the difference.”
She shrugs sadly and withdraws her hand from mine.
Chapter 23
Once again, I don’t remember going to sleep, but when I come to wakefulness, I am in Lars’s office in the house on Springfield Street, standing next to his desk. A pair of scissors is in my hand. For a moment I stare at them, wondering what I was planning to do with them.
I look around, confused, and then it comes to me. Of course. I look at the desk and see Mitch and Missy’s school photographs lying there. I sort through them and find the sheets that contain three-by-five-inch photographs, the right size for the frame on Lars’s desk, the one meant to hold three photographs.
In the school pictures, Mitch and Missy are a matched set. Mitch wears a mustard-colored button-down shirt under a brown vest. His hair is combed carefully to one side, the curls cropped close. Someone, probably Linnea, must have cut his hair not long before the photograph was taken. Missy is wearing a brown dress with a white collar and a wide bow that matches the dark yellow of Mitch’s shirt. Her hair is in pigtails, tied with brown ribbons. Both children are smiling merrily, their eyes no more than slits in their round faces.
I cut out a photograph of each of them and carefully place them in the frame, Mitch on the left-hand side and Missy in the center. And then I look through the photographs and papers on the desk for a picture of Michael.
The photograph I find makes me melancholy. Michael does not have a school picture, of course. But I—to be sure, I am the one who would have done this—have dressed him in the same outfit as Mitch’s and taken a photograph of him against a blank wall in the house. Likely I snapped a whole roll to get this shot, and this was the best of the bunch.
The photograph is not terrible. Michael is not looking at the camera, and he’s not smiling, but at least he’s not scowling. His expression is blank. His collar is straight and his hair is neatly combed. His eyes, behind his glasses, are impossible to decipher; they look neither glad nor glum. But at least he doesn’t seem to be in distress. I hope I didn’t put him through too much, trying to get this photograph taken for Lars.
I place the picture of Michael in the right-hand slot in the frame, then gather up the scraps and extras. I am standing back to admire the effect when I hear the doorbell ring. This is followed by Missy’s excited voice shouting, “They’re here!” There is a trampling of children’s feet down the staircase, then Lars calling down the hallway, “Katharyn, where are you? They’re here!”
Wondering who “they” are, I hurry down the hall. As I do so, I glance at the photograph of the mountain scene, the one across from the master bedroom door. I don’t know where the thought comes from, but suddenly I know exactly where this photograph was taken: at the top of Rabbit Ears Pass, near Steamboat Springs in northwestern Colorado. But that location means nothing to me; I’ve never even been there. I shake my head, trying to make sense of it. No flashes of clarity come to me, so I continue walking and join my family at the front door.
Just coming inside are Linnea, followed by a thin, pleasant-looking man and two gangly young people, a boy and a girl. Linnea’s arms are full with a cookie tray covered with tinfoil. “I brought the rolls,” she says, passing the tray to me. “They just need heating for about twenty minutes.” She leans in and kisses my cheek. “You look beautiful, as always.”
I smile and kiss her back. “It’s all your work, you know.”