A Nordic King(43)

“Back to the questions. You never went to school. Or if you did, it’s not on your resume.”

She shrugs. “I didn’t think school was for me.”

“But you’re terribly bright.”

She bites her tongue. The pink sliver of it peeking through her teeth makes a hot chill run over my skin. “I guess I should take whatever compliment I can get, huh?”

“I just think you would have been a natural teacher. Or at least a history major or archeologist with your love of Greek gods. You’re always teaching the girls something, your brain is like a library.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” she says with a twitch of her shoulder.

She’s being purposely obtuse. “And your mother? Your father? What did they do? Did you have any siblings?”

The corner of her mouth quirks like she’s just eaten something sour. “Well, my mother was a whore and my father was a drunk. That’s who they were, that’s what they did. And thank god I had no siblings because I barely survived myself, just by the skin of my teeth. I’d hate to think what would have happened if I had a sibling to take care of.”

I’m stunned. Sure, Aurora is a little rough around the edges when it comes to decorum and she definitely lacks a filter. But she seems so worldly. Put together.

Happy.

Are we both wearing masks?

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly, feeling horrible that she had to admit that to me.

“Don’t be sorry,” she says with a sigh, picking at the lint on her tights. “It is what it is. Life hands you lemons, you make lemonade, yadda yadda, right? My father did love me, so I knew that much. I had that much. But he died when I was ten. Then my mother was left to raise me and I rarely saw her because she honestly wanted nothing to do with me. So it was just me in that shanty with the leaking tin roof, in the middle of the fucking outback. Thank god it hardly ever rained.”

She glances up at me, raising her chin, as if I’m pitying her. “To answer your question more fully, I didn’t go to school because I dropped out of the last year of high school. I didn’t have any fucking money for university anyway. But it’s fine. There are books and online classes. I learn what I can when I can. Just for fun. And when I did save up enough money, it was to get the fuck out of dodge.”

“Dodge? Is that a town?”

“It’s a saying. I was in Brisbane for a while, which yes, is a town, and I was waitressing and after that I came straight to Paris.”

I stare at her. I stare at her because I can. I stare at her because I’m putting puzzle pieces together in my head.

I stare at her because she’s beautiful.

“Anyway,” she says, finishing her glass and placing it on the bedside table beside the unicorn clock. “I think it’s best I go to bed before I really start telling you my life story.”

She gets to her feet and instinctively I reach out to grab her hand. She stares down at it but I can’t tell if she’s disturbed or not. But I don’t let go. I should. I really should. But I don’t.

“I’d like to hear your life story one day,” I say, my voice coming out in a harsh murmur, as if part of me wished I didn’t say it.

She stares at me a moment, her gaze lingering on mine. Warm and melancholy at the same time.

“I’d like to hear yours, too,” she says.

Then she gives my hand a squeeze and walks out of the room.

The room grows cold without her in it.





Chapter 11





Aurora





December





December has always been a curious time for me.

That lead-up towards Christmas and the holidays that you can’t ignore, even if you try. And, god, how you try.

For the last seven years I’ve spent it with families that aren’t my own.

Before then, I said fuck you to the holiday. I said fuck you to a lot of things.

And then before that, I was just hoping my father would be sober enough to come home. I’d hoped my mother would be kind enough to wish me a Merry Christmas. In the end, I was often alone, staring out the window at the baking desert and listening to Christmas songs on the crackly radio, dreaming of snow and trees and presents and places that seemed so impossible.

I should be happy that I have a job that I love, with kids that I love (because, let’s face it, it’s impossible not to), in a charming country that’s slowly growing on me.

And I am happy, don’t get me wrong.

But there’s something about the holiday season that creeps in like the cold through cracks in the floor. It turns you inward until you’re lost in your own introspection. It unearths the past before it buries it again in snow. It makes you feel things you don’t want to feel, like all your nerve endings are exposed.

Loss. If you’ve lost anyone or anything, then you’ll feel that loss most of all.

I feel the absence of so much that it’s hard not to fall deeper into the void that’s growing inside me.

There’s loss.

And then there’s love.

Love that I don’t have, that I’ve never had.

Why do I feel this loss inside me will always be solved with love?

“Aurora?” Clara says to me, and by the way she says it I think she may have been calling me for a while.